Kentucky 2023 gubernatorial election megathread

[Roll Roons]

Lean D for now. I actually don't think Comer runs - he just became the lead Republican on House Oversight. Beshear won't get the landslide reelection that his dad did, just because the state's become more Republican. But it seems like he's pretty popular, and that's almost always the best predictor of a governor's reelection chances.

[Roll Roons]

I mean this seriously as I don’t actually know much about him, but what is Beshear’s special appeal to republicans?

I'm curious as well. He seems like an affable guy, in stark contrast to Bevin, but is a pretty standard Democrat otherwise.

What's crazy is that he has 39% approval among registered Republicans. That's really good for such a red state.

[Roll Roons]

I see no reason to think Beshear is anywhere close to an underdog.

Candidate quality matters, and there is no better candidate than a popular incumbent.

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https://twitter.com/DanielCameronAG/status/1688282710060466176

Cameron posts a video of him... getting booed at an event.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Beshear is the favorite here and "muh partisanship" is not a good enough reason to think otherwise.

[Roll Roons]

Hate to say this, but Beshear seems like a slight favorite now. This is despite Beshear being no different than a generic Democrat, who imposed extremely harsh COVID restrictions.

Ryan Brune's take seems to be Beshear winning by 2, like Kelly and Edwards. That seems about right.

Maybe voters may actually want to reward someone for trying to keep them safe!

This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen on here.

Republicans literally won VA because of voter anger about school closures and the not-inaccurate belief that McAuliffe would continue to impose restrictions, seeing as he repeatedly lied about how many kids were hospitalized with COVID.

If Beshear wins, it will be in spite of the restrictions, not because of them.

[Roll Roons]

I would say this is around 50-50 for either side. Beshear does have incumbency going for him, and it is true that incumbents rarely lose if they are somewhat popular. The issue with this take though, is it ignores many incumbents do worse in re-election even if they still win.

A big part of the reason why I think Beshear is strongly favoured to win is that incumbent governors very rarely lose re-election, and popular incumbent governors basically never lose re-election. Consider:

Incumbent governor losses in the last 10 years:
Nevada 2022: Lombardo beat Sisolak
Kentucky 2019: Beshear beat Bevin
Illinois 2018: Pritzker beat Rauner
Wisconsin 2018: Evers beat Walker
North Carolina 2016: Cooper beat McCrory
Alaska 2014: Walker beat Parnell
Illinois 2014: Rauner beat Quinn
Pennsylvania 2014: Wolf beat Corbett

All of the very small number of defeated incumbents (only eight in 10 years!) were either massively unpopular (Bevin, Rauner, Quinn, and Corbett), hugely divisive (Walker and McCrory), or, at best, enjoyed decisively lukewarm approvals (Sisolak and Parnell). None of these currently apply to Beshear, of course, who is one of the ten most popular governors in the country. Perhaps also worth noting is that only two of the above eight defeated incumbents were Democrats. Furthermore, the winning challengers in the list above were basically all particularly strong and/or moderate candidates, which is certainly not true of Cameron; he, as has been noted in this thread, is running an uninspired generic right-wing campaign which would probably allow him to autopilot his way to victory in, say, an open Senate race, but seems very unlikely to cut it against a popular incumbent governor.

All the red states you see on that map are incumbents who ran in 2022 and did worse than 2018. Yes, all of them except Sisolak won re-election but they key is they all did worse than their first election in 2018. (For NH and VT I used 2020 to compare). We can also talk about LA 2019 and NJ 2021. So while incumbent governors losing re-election is quite rare, them doing worse than their initial election certainly is not.

So what is my point? Beshear BARELY won in 2019, so basically doing worse is pretty much a loss for all intents and purposes. He didn't win by enough of a margin to afford losing any votes, so while the red states on this map had their incumbents still win, if a shift comparable to what happened in any of those states (except maybe Alaska) occurs in Kentucky it points to a Beshear loss.

This map literally shows that 16 governors did better in their reelection bids compared to their previous race, while 10 did worse. Even if you want to count JBE in 2019 and Murphy in 2021, that still only brings it to 12 governors who did worse.

For that matter, if you include 2020, 6 governors (Carney, Holcomb, Sununu, Cooper, Scott, Inslee) did better than their previous races, while only 1 (Burgum) did worse.

[Roll Roons]

Anecdotally: I have been driving around the state recently and seen probably hundreds of Beshear signs. In cities, suburbs, rural areas, small towns alike. Not a single Cameron sign. Some of these Beshear signs are even next to Trump signs.

Now you might say that yard signs don't mean much, that liberals/Democrats are more likely to be politically engaged anyway, etc. (Although that doesn't explain the ones next to Trump signs.) But all I can say is that, driving through Ohio and Michigan in October 2016, that's when I started to get really worried that Trump could win because I saw Trump sign after Trump sign and no Hillary signs. Seems the enthusiasm is on Beshear's side, and even Cameron's Republican voters by and large aren't thrilled with him. Not saying they won't come out to vote for him, but I am increasingly doubting it will be enough. At this point I now expect Beshear to win by a significantly bigger margin than last time, if not by the landslide margin some polls are showing.

I'm actually valuing anecdotes like this way more than polls at this point, assuming they're coming from reliable people. Back in 2020 it was little things like this that were hints that Trump was still in the race in spite of what the polls were saying.

What kind of specific things are you referring to?

[Roll Roons]

Anecdotally: I have been driving around the state recently and seen probably hundreds of Beshear signs. In cities, suburbs, rural areas, small towns alike. Not a single Cameron sign. Some of these Beshear signs are even next to Trump signs.

Now you might say that yard signs don't mean much, that liberals/Democrats are more likely to be politically engaged anyway, etc. (Although that doesn't explain the ones next to Trump signs.) But all I can say is that, driving through Ohio and Michigan in October 2016, that's when I started to get really worried that Trump could win because I saw Trump sign after Trump sign and no Hillary signs. Seems the enthusiasm is on Beshear's side, and even Cameron's Republican voters by and large aren't thrilled with him. Not saying they won't come out to vote for him, but I am increasingly doubting it will be enough. At this point I now expect Beshear to win by a significantly bigger margin than last time, if not by the landslide margin some polls are showing.

I'm actually valuing anecdotes like this way more than polls at this point, assuming they're coming from reliable people. Back in 2020 it was little things like this that were hints that Trump was still in the race in spite of what the polls were saying.

What kind of specific things are you referring to?

Little things like yard signs, the fact that the entire country seemed to expect it to be close in 2020, reports from people who actually live in a certain area about what the average person there believes. I remember there was a Maine avatar that said back in the summer of 2020 that he didn't know who these polls were reaching because it seemed to him like Sarah Gideon was running a terrible campaign for the state. If it's coming from someone who seems reasonable, that stuff means way more to me than whatever the media says.

Wbrocks ended up massively vindicated when he was insisting on what he was seeing on the ground versus the media narratives and polling. So I'm with you on this now after 2022.

It depends. In 2021, he also claimed multiple times that Ciattarelli's campaign was somehow totally invisible despite that not being the case at all.

[Roll Roons]

In Virginia 2021, it took just about a perfect storm for Youngkin to come back in the final two weeks. I just don't see any momentum building toward that for Cameron.

Youngkin ran a pretty flawless campaign, but he also benefited from McAuliffe's mistakes like the comment about parents in education or repeatedly lying about the risk that kids faced from COVID.

It's possible that Beshear could make an unforced error like that, though he doesn't strike me as the type who would.

[Roll Roons]

My worry with Beshear is that pollsters are correctly estimating his support in polling (47-50%) while severely underestimating Cameron, like what happened in Louisiana. In fact, pollsters in Kentucky have a history of doing that. KY 2014, KY 2015 Governors, KY senate 2016, KY Senate 2020, for example. KY Senate 2022 polling (55-39 Paul vs the result of 38.19-61.8 for Paul).

I mean, even if that were the case, most pollsters have had Beshear around 50%.

The really D ones have him 50-52. The other ones have him around 46-49. and most undecideds in the polls will probably break for Cameron 7/10 times.

The only somewhat recent independent poll was from Emerson, which had him at 49. All the others were from Republican groups. Let's see at least one more independent poll.

[Roll Roons]

The KY posters may be able to confirm this, but my impression is that this race is slipping away from Beshear at the last minute.

Cameron has been far more on message in recent days, relentlessly nationalizing the race and painting Beshear as a national Democrat on two of the most unpopular political stances in the state: his support for Joe Biden and his support for draconian COVID lockdowns.

Previously, Beshear had managed to put Cameron on the defensive on abortion, his ties to Bevin, etc. while Cameron's own attacks were comparatively weak (e.g. on trans rights), but that seems to have changed, and it’s not good for Beshear.

Might turn into another example of "incumbent wishing the election had been held one week earlier."

Or it could be that Cameron would have been able to win if the election was held a week later, but whatever momentum he might have now still isn't enough.

[Roll Roons]

Why is this race getting such little attention compared to VA 2021? In that one it was virtually the main story of the msm, and we had 1oo more pages on that thread than we do for this race a day before the election.

obviously there's more going on in the news, so that's likely it. but the cynic in me believes that the press ate VA up more bc it was "GOP winning in VA!! GOP winning in blue state!!" which entices them way more than a D winning in a GOP state.

Also, Youngkin winning was a flip, while Beshear is already the incumbent in Kentucky; he already won once, so it can't be that shocking if he wins again.

Also, don't underrate the significance of a lot of Virginia being firmly within D.C.'s orbit.  Old Dominion is literally the backyard for the mainstream political press.

Literally because so many political journalists live in NoVA.

[Roll Roons]

I’m honestly very surprised by the late dooming here. Cameron is a very weak candidate and Beshear is relatively popular. I expect him to win by no less than 5%.

Beshear is popular and I still think he’ll win, but what makes Cameron “very weak”? He seems like a fairly generic R, all things considered.

[Roll Roons]

Good numbers for Beshear, time to pop open the bourbon yet? Or am I counting my racehorses before they hatch? Bluegrass?

Where are you seeing results? NYT has nothing up.

[Roll Roons]

I think Andy's win proves that partisanship still truly isn't the end-all be-all when it comes to elections, and there is something very nice about knowing that.

What was the most pro-Trump county he won, and what county saw the biggest swing compared to Biden's result?

Also Oldham, the richest and most educated county in the state, seems to have swung to Beshear marginally less than the state as a whole.