TX-06: Dems in Disarray!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Very sad news, my condolences to his friends and family. Anyways, I actually live in this district and I have a feeling the special election shouldn't be overly competitive even though the district is trending D. I don't think enough D's will turnout to flip the district imo.

First post btw! 

Welcome to the forum!

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

LOL at people saying this is a Lean R or possible pick-up for dems, zero chance.

R+8 in 2018 and R+9 in 2020, the narrative it was 51-48 for Trump doesn't mean anything, there was too much ticket-splitting in Texas.

Safe R, but I hope Dems spend burn some money!

lol, ask congresswoman Karen Handel about how these kinds of trending seats go.

Karen Handel's defeat in 2018 and wide defeat in 2020 reminds me of Bob Dornan's narrow loss in 1996 and blowout defeat in 1998.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

LOL at people saying this is a Lean R or possible pick-up for dems, zero chance.

R+8 in 2018 and R+9 in 2020, the narrative it was 51-48 for Trump doesn't mean anything, there was too much ticket-splitting in Texas.

Safe R, but I hope Dems spend burn some money!

GA-6 was R+23 in 2016.

Is that an apples to apples comparison with the 2018 and 2020 numbers for GA-6, though? 2018 and 2020 were good D years in Texas, 2018 more than 2020.

TX-06 is not a GA-06 analogue because it has two blood red counties added along. GA-11 is more comparable.
(fyi, GA-06 voted for Biden by 11 while GA-11 voted Trump by 15. Neither really reflect TX-06 very well, but at least GA-11 has two exurban counties attached, just like TX-06. If anything, TX-24 is almost the GA-06 to TX-06's GA-11, if we were to anologize about districts in each given metro)

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Gov. Abbott picked May 1 for the special election. But May 1 is literally a Saturday.

Is this good or bad for turnout?

Probably good, because it is on the weekend?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If Susie Wright runs, then this seat is just a smidge away from Safe R. It'd take a total miracle for Dems for them to win.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

snip

Also relevant: look at how Arlington has gotten quite a bit less red since 2016.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1367241604990464007?s=20

That is possibly the stupidest thing I've read today.

I got one better for ya.
https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1367613304118644738

Ambitious pols take to open seats like cats to catnip.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The Democrats need to consolidate behind two or so people to ensure they get a spot in the runoff.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Legit question, how will ED vote come out? How do we not know it will just be relatively even between Rs and Ds?

People are assuming that the trends from the Nov. 2020 election are holding to this special, which I find a bit hard to swallow. Especially with the hubbub about voter ID for absentee/early ballots.

Texas Dems in general still have substantial problems in lower-turnout elections. It seems that in Texas, the higher the turnout the better for Ds - with the notable exception of the RGV.
The fact Ds are seemingly headed for a lockout is testament to that.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Ngl, I kind of assumed the suburbs would show a reversion after the Trump presidency. You saw it very slowly already in the GA runoffs before Trump was even out of office and now you see it even stronger post Trump entirely..

Yeah, some of the richest Atlanta suburbs were the one place where Loeffler and (especially) Perdue meaningfully outperformed Trump.

Yeah except this district is closer to GA07 than GA06.

An argument can be made for it being most like GA-11, only with suburban, urban, and rural portions that are all more R than their TX-06 equivalents.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Wright is going to the runoff, no question about it. But Sanchez is actually closing the gap from the 2-3 points earlier. It is now less than 400 votes.

Hopefully she can still make the runoff.

There are only 9 precincts from Tarrant left.

It’s over.

It’s going to be a 2xR runoff.

Tarrant favors Sanchez over Ellzey though.

All of Tarrant now in, Ellezey defeats Sanchez by 354 votes apparently. Provisionals not included.

How are provisionals likely to go?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Nothing of value

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The reason this race is bad news for the democrats is not cause of the result but rather it shows the idea that democrats have this major advantage with high propensity voters is not true and that was something they needed to be true to have any realistic chance at the house

Regardless of how much you try to spin out of this election result, it still is over-analysis. Doubly so given all the other factors (sympathy, TX Ds being notoriously bad with turning out in specials, the D base being particularly low-turnout minorities, etc)
This is a particularly bad example to try to justify this kind of argument.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

The reason this race is bad news for the democrats is not cause of the result but rather it shows the idea that democrats have this major advantage with high propensity voters is not true and that was something they needed to be true to have any realistic chance at the house

Regardless of how much you try to spin out of this election result, it still is over-analysis. Doubly so given all the other factors (sympathy, TX Ds being notoriously bad with turning out in specials, the D base being particularly low-turnout minorities, etc)
This is a particularly bad example to try to justify this kind of argument.

Not really cause the fact is there is almost no realistic way the democrats were gonna hold the house unless their theory of republicans not turning out in non presidential years due to democrats having this massive advantage with high propensity voters was accurate.

I mean, that might or might not be true, but TX-06 is a very bad test case for that hypothesis, and other factors relevant to the circumstances of the election only make it even more unsuitable.