2020 Generic Ballot / Recruitment / Fundraising / Ratings Megathread v2

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/rpyers/status/1184200108096647168

Porter continues to blow the field away.

https://twitter.com/CATargetBot/status/1184215094428721152

https://twitter.com/ActorAaronBooth/status/1184216067880771587

https://twitter.com/CATargetBot/status/1184216450170404864

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/CATargetBot/status/1184194688510615552

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/ActorAaronBooth/status/1184228694346358784

[Oryxslayer]

Peterson only got $23K from individuals this quarter compared to Fischbach who got $81K in donations from individuals.

https://twitter.com/allymutnick/status/1184234312083873792

Peterson is probably doomed at this point. He should retire, to avoid an embarrassing defeat.

I wouldn't mind if he retires really.   Not a big deal.

Same, but i would prefer he does  in next cycle, when his seat is getting cut anyway.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/will_doran/status/1186748032022392833

Interesting. It seems as if the Blue courts are preparing to seize de facto redistricting power in NC 2020, even as de  jure authority rests with the legislature.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/MattMackowiak/status/1187174849497780226

Don't know why, Chet Edwards isn't really gonna be getting amazing rural numbers. He's also been a lobbyist for 8 years.

This is the kind of candidate you recruit to lower your margin of defeat and force the GOP to spread their TX resources even more thin. I don't think anyone expects a win unless we venture beyond the normal 90% of outcomes.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1187434251152572417

Potential primary on the horizon?

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1188863357778051072

Oregon's only GOPer throws in the towel. I wonder how radical a republican will win the primary with the raging eastern base.

[Oryxslayer]

Army vet/Author/FOX news guy Sean Parnell may run against Conner Lamb. Umm...Ok then.

[Oryxslayer]

Nick Freitas is a pretty weak candidate though, so I can understand the rating change if that is who the Republicans are settling on, but I also think it's silly to have VA-2 as a tossup right now.

Out of curiosity, why is Freitas a weak candidate?

He was a really strong candidate until 2019. This year, he tried to have a family member primary a moderate GOPer in the state senate, which failed. He in general threw himself behind the slew of more conservative primaries, only one of which succeeded and ended up giving the democrat the seat. He than went around to all the out of state donors brandishing his credentials but in the process forgot to submit the paperwork to properly run for reelection. His seat ironically became a battleground. After losing a lawsuit to try and get on the ballot, he had to call in tons of donor favors to run a serious write-in campaign. Freitas ended up winning that write-in campaign, but only after groups like the NRA had to bail him out with millions in ads on how to write Freitas. His star has certainly diminished over the past eleven months.

Finally, there is the fact Freitas Repp's the rural north of the seat and not the suburbs where the votes are, but that is not his fault.

[Oryxslayer]

Inside Elections made 13 House rating changes (12 in favor of Democrats, 1 in favor of Republicans):

https://insideelections.com/ratings/house/2020-house-ratings-november-26-2019

AZ-06 (Schweikert): Safe R -> Likely R
CA-25 (VACANT): Likely D -> Solid D
IL-06 (Casten): Lean D -> Likely D
IL-13 (Davis): Tilt R -> Tossup
IA-02 (Loebsack, OPEN): Tossup -> Tilt D
IA-04 (King): Lean R -> Tilt R
MI-08 (Slotkin): Tilt D -> Lean D
MI-11 (Stevens): Lean D -> Likely D
MN-01 (Hagedorn): Lean R -> Tilt R
MN-02 (Craig): Lean D -> Likely D
MN-07 (Peterson): Lean D -> Tilt D
NH-01 (Pappas): Lean D -> Likely D
VA-02 (Luria): Tilt D -> Lean D

I wonder whats the explanation for CA25? Guess it must be the primary date, Dems more or less unification around a candidate, and the sh**tty shape of the GOP field.

[Oryxslayer]

Now that the NC map appears somewhat final, Dems have begun to scope out the new safe seats. Deborah Ross, former Wake state legislator and 2016 Senate candidate has entered NC02. Kathy Manning who ran a competitive campaign for NC13 in 2018 has filed for the new NC06.

[Oryxslayer]

Inside Elections released their initial ratings of NC's new congressional districts:

https://insideelections.com/ratings/house/2020-house-ratings-december-6-2019

NC-02: Likely D
NC-06: Likely D
NC-08: Likely R
NC-09: Lean R

Every other seat is either Solid D or Solid R for the party that holds them.

Was this the one who said they put NC-2 and NC-6 as Likely rather than Safe only to keep them on the chart as visible pickups?

No, thats Cook. But Inside may have a similar policy.

[Oryxslayer]

In the congressional race in NC-06, the race is going to be between Mark Walker (R) and whoever wins the Democratic primary. The Democratic primary is the real contest and I have a gut feeling that Kathy Manning will use her name recognition from her last House race to cruise to the nomination even though the primary will probably be split along racial lines.

https://twitter.com/brookefoxnews/status/1204047644492017668

Welp.  There goes the VAGOP's chance of making the Senate seat even 1% competitive.  Now they don't even have hope for a miracle.

Taylor is damaged goods. I doubt he would have made the Senate race competitive.

How is he damaged goods?

You don't remember how he broke campaign law last time and forged signatures to try and get the Green Party on the ballot?

[Oryxslayer]

In the congressional race in NC-06, the race is going to be between Mark Walker (R) and whoever wins the Democratic primary. The Democratic primary is the real contest and I have a gut feeling that Kathy Manning will use her name recognition from her last House race to cruise to the nomination even though the primary will probably be split along racial lines.

https://twitter.com/brookefoxnews/status/1204047644492017668

Welp.  There goes the VAGOP's chance of making the Senate seat even 1% competitive.  Now they don't even have hope for a miracle.

Taylor is damaged goods. I doubt he would have made the Senate race competitive.

How is he damaged goods?

You don't remember how he broke campaign law last time and forged signatures to try and get the Green Party on the ballot?

I actually forgot about that story. Why was he trying to get a third party candidate on the ballot?

A Green third party poaches only Democratic votes, at least on paper. In essence, dirty, illegal, tricks.

It's a sign of how far the VA GOP has fallen that one of their two likely nominees for the competitive seats broke campaign law in in a way that was all over local news, and their other is an idiot who had to run an expensive write-in for his safe R seat all because he forgot to hand in the forms.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/1204409827457486848

Time to break out the champagne.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/WisVoter/status/1206989150253174784?s=20

For impeachment : 45%
Against : 50%

But ElectionsGuy and Atlas told me Kind was vulnerable/this was a sleeper for the GOP/trends/rural WI will swing GOP!

The thing is that MuLaw has Trump approval rate at 47/50 so if he is doing so badly in this district it means that he is probably doing far better in WOW counties than in 2016. It would be funny to see WOW counties swinging hard toward him while sparsely populated counties in West WI swing against him

Or more likely, the northern chunk of the state found mostly in CDs 6, 7, and 8. The 2018 gov race and the 2019 court race showed that the GOP could lose ground in WOW compared to pre-2016, and lose ground in the Western towns but still win. They just couldn't lose too much ground, and the Fox valley/upstate/Twin cities exurbs need to keep their GOP majorities, and ideally build upon them.

[Oryxslayer]

Tbh I’m not convinced that each dollar matters as much as the next. Obviously it’s nice to have a COH advantage but how much do a few extra ad buys really get you? I’d much rather be ahead like 4 million to 1 million than 20 to 10, even though the raw gap in the latter two numbers is larger.

I wonder if anyone has done a study on this, or on the efficacy of spending in politics in general.

Money in a campaign does reach a saturation level at some point,  there was a study on it somewhere, but can't remember it.    

There are a bunch of academic papers on this topic in electoral studies on jstor. The general conclusion is that mass money has only a marginal effect, and there is the assumption that both parties will have similar infrastructures and funds to spend on campaigns. Therefore, if one candidate has a lead in funding, it won't matter that much. However, there are two situations why money does have a serious impact, and both occur at the opposite ends of this supposed cash 'equilibrium.' If one side ignores fundraising or ignores one aspect of campaign spending (grassroots, ads, contacting, GOTV, etc) then there will be a notable difference in the outcomes in regards to that aspect of the campaign. The other option is if one party spends far more the the opposition; doubling or tripling the oppositions money even when the opposition is spending significant amounts. This has the effect of 'drowning out' the opponents, a la Bloomberg in the presidential race, and it converts into gains that are  more than marginal.

Of course, these studies often differ on the dividing line between marginal and significant, and even when the effects are significant they are  still underwhelming.

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/kirk_bado/status/1220731713183199232

GOP seems to be on tract for an explosive  primary in NY-11. Fortunately for the GOP, Saladino is out now though.

[Oryxslayer]

Crystal Ball rating changes
http://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/the-republicans-house-chances-its-on-trump/

Most of these changes make sense except maybe MN-1, don’t see any reason to downgrade it to Lean R. Among the majors changes they’re moving NY-19 and UT-4 to Lean D from Tossup, at the same time they’re moving PA-1 from Tossup to Lean R.

Most of the major changes make sense since we have discussed within this thread the GOP and in some cases Democratic recruiting failures in these districts. TX-07 being downgraded to Lean Dem is the one that I haven't heard much about. Sabato cites a 'good' GOP recruit, though like everything, we shall see if such expectations are proven correct in the fall.

[Oryxslayer]

I am not surprised by this, Biden sapped up all the oxygen out the room except for Bernie online donations; consequently,  online donations have haulted due to the presidential race. As long as gas prices are elevated, people arent gonna keep giving. They still havent polled MA primary election and its March 3rd between Markey and Kennedy. Pelosi is begging for more donations

But, Trump is still a weaker Candidate than an Establishment R would be and he is beatable and so is the Leadership in the Senate. People are limiting their candidates who they are donating to

Do you just enjoying trolling with your takes? You never give any further explanation/reasoning for them.

It's been over a week and I'm still wondering what the hell "Warren's losing support because Castro is enabling her" is supposed to mean.

I'm surprised there are still people who don't have him ignored. He posts so often and his posts often only tangentially refer to the topic at hand. I have long thought it has to be a bot, but....

[Oryxslayer]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/30/1941431/-Even-if-Republicans-run-the-table-that-won-t-be-enough-to-take-back-the-House-our-new-ratings-show

Daily Kos came out with House ratings. For the most part, they actually seem pretty reasonable, though I might move IA-01, CA-21 and CA-48 (especially if they include FL-26, NJ-07 and TX-07) to tossup.

Would also move TX 24 to tossup, its a carbon copy of GA 7th(+23 Romney to +6.5 Trump and solid margins in 2018 statewide races)

The primary matters there IMO, though even with Valenzuela it's still a toss-up (would be far more of a problem if she was a Berniecrat rather than a Warrencrat)

Valenzuela is a pretty compelling candidate in her own right and she has some pretty big endorsements behind her in addition to Warren (namely EMILY's List), so I wouldn't underestimate her. That said, this district should be one of the easier Texas districts to flip based not only on its 2016 trend but because Beto O'Rourke won it and several other statewide Democrats won or came close to winning it.

The problem here isn't the candidates - they are both good recruits in different ways. The problem is that the primary is getting heated in a way that may carry over to the general.

[Oryxslayer]

https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/b2783bd6491979b5b79f17e1fc3dc043/TX-23%20General%20Election%20Survey%20Key%20Findings%20Memo.pdf

TX-23 Remington Poll (R):

Gina Ortiz-Jones (D) 45%
Tony Gonzales (R) 43%

I mean it's basically GG if right now the republicans are behind in this seat. SW Hispanics for a multitude of reasons are usually filtered out by polls this early, only tuning it closer to the election. This, after all, is why the NYT polls for TX23 in 2018 ended up so hard in the GOPs favor, leading the dem donors to abandon what would eventually be a marginal seat. 

[Oryxslayer]

Reoccurring problem for Freitas and...maybe Bigfoot man avoids his primary? It will come down to the court's and election board to decide on whether to forgive their sins or not, since the paperwork has now been hand delivered a few days late.

https://twitter.com/Jaaavis/status/1271551373591687170?s=20

[Oryxslayer]

https://www.politico.com/playbook

FIRST LOOK FOR PLAYBOOKERS … MINNESOTA REP. TOM EMMER, the chair of the House GOP’s campaign arm, will use a virtual meeting of House Republican lawmakers this morning to brief them on a new battleground poll the Terrance Group conducted June 7-10 among 1,014 swing voters. Here are the highlights:

THE POLL SHOWS REPUBLICANS hold a 1-point advantage over Democrats on the generic ballot (testing a generic R vs. generic D). … THE ECONOMY is a top concern of voters -- 23% says it’s their top concern, followed by corruption in D.C. at 20% and the coronavirus at 10%. 56% of voters approve of the job the president is doing on the economy. … Unsurprisingly, DEFUNDING POLICE is unpopular, with 59% of swing voters opposed. But 51% support the protests -- which might help explain some of the urgency to address police conduct. Read the memo Republicans will get this morning

NRCC internal: R+1 on the generic ballot

Isn't this just R+1 among whatever they're defining as "swing voters?" LOL either way.

I mean if its present swing voters rather than a pool weighted by historic swing, it actually makes the most sense for it to be GOP leaning. The current situation has pushed the center of gravity so that swing voters were former republicans and former swing voters are now Biden voters.