Most Stunning Senate Result in every election since 1980
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OSR stands with Israel
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« on: October 13, 2021, 09:31:44 PM »

1980: Matt Mattingly defeating Herman Talmadge in Georgia
1982: Jerry Brown losing by nearly 7 points in California
1984: Mitch McConnell winning in Kentucky
1986: Slade Gorton losing in Washington
1988: The Democrat coming so close in Wyoming
1990: Paul Wellstone winning in Minnesota
1992: Fritz Hollings nearly losing in South Carolina
1994: Fred Thompson winning Tenneesse in a landslide
1996: Tim Hutchinson winning in Arkansas
1998: John Edwards winning in North Carolina
2000: John Ashcroft losing to a Dead candidate
2002: Tim Hutchinson losing in Arkansas
2004: Jim Bunning nearly losing in Kentucky
2006: Really nothing but id say Jim Webb winning in Virginia
2008: Elizabeth Dole losing by 8 points in North Carolina
2010: Scott Brown winning the senate race in Massachusetts(Dems losing in Illions was actually expected)
2012: Heidi Heitkamp winning in North Dakota
2014: Mark Warner nearly losing in Virginia
2016: Jason Kander nearly winning  in Missouri
2018: Doug Jones winning the Alabama Special(Yes its 2017 but nothing else was a surprise really)
2020: Susan Collins winning so easily in Maine
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Leroy McPherson fan
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« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2021, 10:23:57 PM »

1980: Matt Mattingly defeating Herman Talmadge in Georgia
1982: Jerry Brown losing by nearly 7 points in California
1984: Mitch McConnell winning in Kentucky
1986: Slade Gorton losing in Washington
1988: The Democrat coming so close in Wyoming
1990: Paul Wellstone winning in Minnesota
1992: Fritz Hollings nearly losing in South Carolina
1994: Fred Thompson winning Tenneesse in a landslide
1996: Tim Hutchinson winning in Arkansas
1998: John Edwards winning in North Carolina
2000: John Ashcroft losing to a Dead candidate
2002: Tim Hutchinson losing in Arkansas
2004: Jim Bunning nearly losing in Kentucky
2006: Really nothing but id say Jim Webb winning in Virginia
2008: Elizabeth Dole losing by 8 points in North Carolina
2010: Scott Brown winning the senate race in Massachusetts(Dems losing in Illions was actually expected)
2012: Heidi Heitkamp winning in North Dakota
2014: Mark Warner nearly losing in Virginia
2016: Jason Kander nearly winning  in Missouri
2018: Doug Jones winning the Alabama Special(Yes its 2017 but nothing else was a surprise really)
2020: Susan Collins winning so easily in Maine
For 2018, you could say Bill Nelson losing.
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Vosem
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« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2021, 11:50:31 PM »

The ones I remember:

2020: Collins not just winning, but winning by 9 points
2018: Scott beating Nelson
2016: none were that surprising, but I guess Hassan winning even though McGinty/Feingold, who polled better, lost
2014: Tillis beating Hagan
2012: Heitkamp beating Berg -- most surprising result since I started paying attention
2010: Reid not just winning, but winning by 6 points
2008: none were that surprising, but Stevens coming as close as he did -- he was expected to lose by 20 but came within a point

These were the most surprising on Election Night (or during Election Week for a few of them; AK-Sen 2008 in particular wasn't decided for a few days). For earlier cycles, I can do what would've been most surprising at the start of the cycle, but many of the wackiest results of the 2010s that no one would've predicted a year earlier (like MO-Sen 2012, or either the AL or MA special elections) were accurately forecasted by polling.
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TML
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« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2021, 11:57:52 PM »
« Edited: October 14, 2021, 12:05:04 AM by TML »

For 2020, I would add the result of the Montana Senate election to the list of stunners (to me, the identity of the winner wasn't a surprise, but the margin most definitely was - given the fact that polls during the last few months had the two candidates frequently trading narrow leads, along with the state's ticket-splitting habits up to 2018, I had expected a result closer to R+3 as opposed to the actual result of R+10).
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TiltsAreUnderrated
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« Reply #4 on: October 14, 2021, 05:58:10 AM »

For 2020, I would add the result of the Montana Senate election to the list of stunners (to me, the identity of the winner wasn't a surprise, but the margin most definitely was - given the fact that polls during the last few months had the two candidates frequently trading narrow leads, along with the state's ticket-splitting habits up to 2018, I had expected a result closer to R+3 as opposed to the actual result of R+10).

I was expecting R+2 and have to agree with this. Daines’ margin shocked me more than any other Senate result. Collins’ win was surprising, but not that stunning - her margin was padded by RCV.
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Buffalo Mayor Young Kim
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« Reply #5 on: October 14, 2021, 11:10:45 AM »

Um, why would Wellstone surprise you?

Democrats winning in Minnesota is pretty normal.
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Hope For A New Era
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« Reply #6 on: October 14, 2021, 11:12:51 AM »

For earlier cycles, I can do what would've been most surprising at the start of the cycle, but many of the wackiest results of the 2010s that no one would've predicted a year earlier (like MO-Sen 2012, or either the AL or MA special elections) were accurately forecasted by polling.

Missouri 2012 actually wasn't forecasted by polling, which is really weird. "Legitimate rape" appeared to only switch it from a narrow Akin lead to a narrow McCaskill lead. With the exception of a single +15 outlier, the polls generally pointed to a likely result of about McCaskill +6 (rather than the McCaskill +16 that actually happened).
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OSR stands with Israel
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« Reply #7 on: October 14, 2021, 11:15:05 AM »

Um, why would Wellstone surprise you?

Democrats winning in Minnesota is pretty normal.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_United_States_Senate_election_in_Minnesota


It was considered an upset , and keep in mind back then partisanship of a state mattered less than incumbency
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« Reply #8 on: October 14, 2021, 11:43:16 AM »

If we're talking about expectations on Election Night or the election cycle as a whole, then 2016 has to be WI-SEN, even if the result was later seen to be in line with the overall kind of night it was. I'd say that the margin of IA-SEN 2014 was also very surprising at the time, it just makes more sense now in the context of other Iowa elections. For 2018, I'd say the closeness of TX-SEN deserves a mention, since many thought it was be a comfortable Cruz win, and that it would easily vote far to the right of IN-SEN and MO-SEN.
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Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers
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« Reply #9 on: October 14, 2021, 11:49:27 AM »

Hassan is in the same position as Quinn and Whitmer it's a 304 map but a potential for an upset and Mandel is Renacci running against Ryan just like Renacci lost to Brown, Midterm are less Partisan and Steele can certainly win and Crist and Demings can win just like Sink almost did in 2010 he is a lawyer, FL is the first battleground state it won't come in like it did last time, D's aren't gonna win Miami only by 10 pts
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MT Treasurer
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« Reply #10 on: October 14, 2021, 12:24:21 PM »
« Edited: October 14, 2021, 12:29:35 PM by MT Treasurer »

2000: MO-SEN (this was always expected to be close, but Ashcroft [at least technically] losing to a dead man was quite something) but more generally the near-D sweep of competitive Senate races that year even as they lost the White House
2002: LA-SEN runoff (illustrated how overblown R gains were in that election and how far Republican candidates actually ran behind Bush's approval rating and the partisan leans of red states)
2004: LA-SEN (Vitter avoiding a runoff)
2006: MT-SEN (Burns nearly saving the Senate for Republicans despite Tester being seen as a lock for most of 2006 and the most likely Democratic challenger after Casey to flip a R seat)
2008: AK-SEN (Begich nearly losing) but also the margin in ME-SEN
2010: NV-SEN (Reid's margin of victory)
2012: MO-SEN (McCaskill's margin of victory)
2014: VA-SEN (Warner nearly losing) but also the margin in MI-SEN
2016: IN-SEN (Young's margin of victory), WI-SEN wasn’t really that surprising (even polling indicated a Tossup by election day)
2018: FL-SEN (Scott winning in a Trump +1 state in a D landslide/massive D wave in which Republicans couldn’t even flip WV, MT, OH and lost House seats in OK, SC, etc.)
2020: MT-SEN (KS-SEN makes it close, both were shocking because of the margins by which they were decided)
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« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2021, 05:34:16 AM »

Heitkamp was the most surprising win of 2012, but I'd argue Kerrey's margin of defeat in Nebraska was extremely surprising, especially given how well Democrats did in North Dakota, Missouri, and Indiana that year. Nebraska was certainly ahead of many other red states in rejecting the Democratic Party beneath the presidential level, and it should've been seen as an early warning sign.
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politicallefty
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« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2021, 07:19:20 AM »

2000: MO-SEN (this was always expected to be close, but Ashcroft [at least technically] losing to a dead man was quite something) but more generally the near-D sweep of competitive Senate races that year even as they lost the White House
2002: LA-SEN runoff (illustrated how overblown R gains were in that election and how far Republican candidates actually ran behind Bush's approval rating and the partisan leans of red states)
2004: LA-SEN (Vitter avoiding a runoff)
2006: MT-SEN (Burns nearly saving the Senate for Republicans despite Tester being seen as a lock for most of 2006 and the most likely Democratic challenger after Casey to flip a R seat)
2008: AK-SEN (Begich nearly losing) but also the margin in ME-SEN
2010: NV-SEN (Reid's margin of victory)
2012: MO-SEN (McCaskill's margin of victory)
2014: VA-SEN (Warner nearly losing) but also the margin in MI-SEN
2016: IN-SEN (Young's margin of victory), WI-SEN wasn’t really that surprising (even polling indicated a Tossup by election day)
2018: FL-SEN (Scott winning in a Trump +1 state in a D landslide/massive D wave in which Republicans couldn’t even flip WV, MT, OH and lost House seats in OK, SC, etc.)
2020: MT-SEN (KS-SEN makes it close, both were shocking because of the margins by which they were decided)

The ones I put in bold are definitely the most noteworthy I would think of within the past 20 years. This is what I would add:

2004: KY-Sen (Republican incumbent only holding on by a little over 1% while Republicans win every competitive seat except CO-Sen.)
2012: ND-Sen (I didn't even have Heitkamp winning in my predictions. I'd predicted 54 seats, but Democrats pushed the majority to 55.)
2014: NC-Sen (Hagan losing.) and IA-Sen (The margin. It was a sign of things to come.)
2016: OH-Sen (Strickland losing by 21 points.)
2018: MO-Sen and IN-Sen (I definitely didn't see those two going down by 6 points. I also thought Donnelly was going to win. I was far more nervous about McCaskill.)
2020: ME-Sen (I thought Collins was done.)

Overall, what tends to surprise me is how strongly Senate races tend to fall to one party. I've read about that from Charlie Cook for years, but some years it's really staggering. The 2004 map was my first real experience with that being fully aware of politics. I remember Republicans were hoping for at best 54 seats that year, but managed to push it further and get 55. In that same vein, 2006 and 2008 went pretty much as expected near the end. The Democratic tsunami was at full force in the Senate. The same happened for Republicans in 2014, although the magnitude of that was quite unexpected. I think 54 seats was beyond even the highest range of most prognosticators.
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Chancellor Tanterterg
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« Reply #13 on: October 16, 2021, 08:53:47 AM »
« Edited: October 16, 2021, 08:59:46 AM by The Democratic Party Left Me »

For the ones I remember:

2002: No good options, but I guess Chambliss winning since he started out trailing Cleland by over 20% in most polls

2004: No good options (Bunning was clearly imploding in a big way well before Election Day and it was low key surprising that he won), so I guess Daschle losing just b/c at the time I think a lot of Democrats seemed pretty shell-shocked when he actually lost even if we knew it was very possible on an intellectual level.  You could also make a case for Murkowski beating Tony Knowles given that she was regarded as the underdog for much of the campaign.

2006: Definitely Webb winning

2008: Dole losing by quite a bit, although McConnell only beating a very weak, scandal-ridden C-lister 53%-47% was also pretty surprising (and frustrating in hindsight b/c he probably would’ve lost to an A-list opponent like Ben Chandler or Steve Beasher and the country would be in a far better place as a result).  

2010: Harry Reid defying political gravity

2012: No one saw Heitkamp’s win coming

2014: Warner nearly losing

2016: Ron Johnson winning re-election

2018: No good options, so I guess Sherrod Brown beating an extremely weak opponent by only like 6% instead of double-digits or at least high single-digits.  Nelson losing was a disappointment, but Nelson ran an abysmal campaign and some on Atlas (especially FL posters) were already saying he could lose by like July of 2018.  

2020: Tillis winning re-election, a lot of folks thought Cunningham would eek out a win and I remember being pretty widely mocked for arguing that his scandal would really hurt him (the Atlas consensus seemed to be that voters wouldn’t care b/c “something, something Donald Trump”).  You could also make a case for Bullock losing in a landslide in what was widely considered a pure tossup or Tilt R race, but given how off the polls were, that one would’ve been easier to predict but for polling error whereas the Cunningham loss* was due to an unforeseeable factor whose impact was widely underestimated.

*which has spawned tons of revisionist history about how the DSCC somehow forced him upon voters even though Cunningham was basically their last choice after Foxx, Stein, Allen Joines, and Cooper declined, Colwell’s skeletons came out, Jackson insisted on the bold strategy of “if I run, I will do almost literally no fundraising b/c campaign ads don’t matter.”  That left us with either Cunningham or a random DINO state rep who was clearly running as an R plant (Erica Smith), not much of a choice imo.  

The fact that C-list Cunningham clearly would’ve won but for the scandal despite being the personification of a bland C-lister also shows the DSCC had the right strategy here, Cunningham simply turned out to be an idiot who couldn’t keep it in his pants.  The DSCC has screwed up races before (ex: not pushing the Nelson campaign to get its act together and taking WI for granted in 2016), but this wasn’t one of them.  But I digress…
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Mr.Phips
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« Reply #14 on: October 16, 2021, 09:01:13 AM »

2000: MO-SEN (this was always expected to be close, but Ashcroft [at least technically] losing to a dead man was quite something) but more generally the near-D sweep of competitive Senate races that year even as they lost the White House
2002: LA-SEN runoff (illustrated how overblown R gains were in that election and how far Republican candidates actually ran behind Bush's approval rating and the partisan leans of red states)
2004: LA-SEN (Vitter avoiding a runoff)
2006: MT-SEN (Burns nearly saving the Senate for Republicans despite Tester being seen as a lock for most of 2006 and the most likely Democratic challenger after Casey to flip a R seat)
2008: AK-SEN (Begich nearly losing) but also the margin in ME-SEN
2010: NV-SEN (Reid's margin of victory)
2012: MO-SEN (McCaskill's margin of victory)
2014: VA-SEN (Warner nearly losing) but also the margin in MI-SEN
2016: IN-SEN (Young's margin of victory), WI-SEN wasn’t really that surprising (even polling indicated a Tossup by election day)
2018: FL-SEN (Scott winning in a Trump +1 state in a D landslide/massive D wave in which Republicans couldn’t even flip WV, MT, OH and lost House seats in OK, SC, etc.)
2020: MT-SEN (KS-SEN makes it close, both were shocking because of the margins by which they were decided)

The ones I put in bold are definitely the most noteworthy I would think of within the past 20 years. This is what I would add:

2004: KY-Sen (Republican incumbent only holding on by a little over 1% while Republicans win every competitive seat except CO-Sen.)
2012: ND-Sen (I didn't even have Heitkamp winning in my predictions. I'd predicted 54 seats, but Democrats pushed the majority to 55.)
2014: NC-Sen (Hagan losing.) and IA-Sen (The margin. It was a sign of things to come.)
2016: OH-Sen (Strickland losing by 21 points.)
2018: MO-Sen and IN-Sen (I definitely didn't see those two going down by 6 points. I also thought Donnelly was going to win. I was far more nervous about McCaskill.)
2020: ME-Sen (I thought Collins was done.)

Overall, what tends to surprise me is how strongly Senate races tend to fall to one party. I've read about that from Charlie Cook for years, but some years it's really staggering. The 2004 map was my first real experience with that being fully aware of politics. I remember Republicans were hoping for at best 54 seats that year, but managed to push it further and get 55. In that same vein, 2006 and 2008 went pretty much as expected near the end. The Democratic tsunami was at full force in the Senate. The same happened for Republicans in 2014, although the magnitude of that was quite unexpected. I think 54 seats was beyond even the highest range of most prognosticators.

Dems haven’t had a Senate cycle where they won most of the tossup races since 2012.  Every election since then (there have been four now) they have underperformed expectations in senate races.
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« Reply #15 on: October 16, 2021, 10:01:57 AM »

Only doing last two since even though before 2018 I followed politics, it was not as in depth...

2018: FL-Sen (Scott winning in a D+8 year in a state Trump only won by 1 against a 3 term incumbent)

2020: ME-Sen (Collins' margin of victory)
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Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers
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« Reply #16 on: October 16, 2021, 12:26:49 PM »

2000 Carnahan def Ashcroft
2004 FL Castle loses
2006 McCaskill Def Talent
2008 AK Begich Def Stevens
           NC Hagen Def Dole
2010 IL Kirk Def Ginnoulias
          WI Johnson Def Feingold
2012 OH Brown Def Mandel just like Tim Ryan will
2014. GA Perdue Def Nunn
           LA Cassidy Def Landrieu
2016.  OH Strickland loses by 20
2018.   OH Brown Def Renacci
2020.   MT Daines Def Bullock
2022.   OH Ryan Def Mandel
           FL Demings Def Rubio Biden is leading FL
          MO BOLD PREDICTION Kunce Def Grietans
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Schiff for Senate
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« Reply #17 on: October 17, 2021, 08:14:56 PM »

2010 is most definitely MA. For some idea as to how blue the state is, it last elected a GOP representative in the Republican Revolution of 1994, and about 10% of registered voters are Republicans. Of course, the GOP has a stranglehold on the governership, but gubernatorial elections are very different from senate elections, particularly in MA, where most of the GOP's winning gubernatorial nominees are borderline centrists.
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« Reply #18 on: October 17, 2021, 08:45:22 PM »

For the ones I remember:

2002: No good options, but I guess Chambliss winning since he started out trailing Cleland by over 20% in most polls

2004: No good options (Bunning was clearly imploding in a big way well before Election Day and it was low key surprising that he won), so I guess Daschle losing just b/c at the time I think a lot of Democrats seemed pretty shell-shocked when he actually lost even if we knew it was very possible on an intellectual level.  You could also make a case for Murkowski beating Tony Knowles given that she was regarded as the underdog for much of the campaign.

2006: Definitely Webb winning

2008: Dole losing by quite a bit, although McConnell only beating a very weak, scandal-ridden C-lister 53%-47% was also pretty surprising (and frustrating in hindsight b/c he probably would’ve lost to an A-list opponent like Ben Chandler or Steve Beasher and the country would be in a far better place as a result).  

2010: Harry Reid defying political gravity

2012: No one saw Heitkamp’s win coming

2014: Warner nearly losing

2016: Ron Johnson winning re-election

2018: No good options, so I guess Sherrod Brown beating an extremely weak opponent by only like 6% instead of double-digits or at least high single-digits.  Nelson losing was a disappointment, but Nelson ran an abysmal campaign and some on Atlas (especially FL posters) were already saying he could lose by like July of 2018.  

2020: Tillis winning re-election, a lot of folks thought Cunningham would eek out a win and I remember being pretty widely mocked for arguing that his scandal would really hurt him (the Atlas consensus seemed to be that voters wouldn’t care b/c “something, something Donald Trump”).  You could also make a case for Bullock losing in a landslide in what was widely considered a pure tossup or Tilt R race, but given how off the polls were, that one would’ve been easier to predict but for polling error whereas the Cunningham loss* was due to an unforeseeable factor whose impact was widely underestimated.

*which has spawned tons of revisionist history about how the DSCC somehow forced him upon voters even though Cunningham was basically their last choice after Foxx, Stein, Allen Joines, and Cooper declined, Colwell’s skeletons came out, Jackson insisted on the bold strategy of “if I run, I will do almost literally no fundraising b/c campaign ads don’t matter.”  That left us with either Cunningham or a random DINO state rep who was clearly running as an R plant (Erica Smith), not much of a choice imo.  

The fact that C-list Cunningham clearly would’ve won but for the scandal despite being the personification of a bland C-lister also shows the DSCC had the right strategy here, Cunningham simply turned out to be an idiot who couldn’t keep it in his pants.  The DSCC has screwed up races before (ex: not pushing the Nelson campaign to get its act together and taking WI for granted in 2016), but this wasn’t one of them.  But I digress…

I don’t see how Cunningham would have won given Trump held onto NC.
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« Reply #19 on: October 17, 2021, 11:18:44 PM »

For the ones I remember:

2002: No good options, but I guess Chambliss winning since he started out trailing Cleland by over 20% in most polls

2004: No good options (Bunning was clearly imploding in a big way well before Election Day and it was low key surprising that he won), so I guess Daschle losing just b/c at the time I think a lot of Democrats seemed pretty shell-shocked when he actually lost even if we knew it was very possible on an intellectual level.  You could also make a case for Murkowski beating Tony Knowles given that she was regarded as the underdog for much of the campaign.

2006: Definitely Webb winning

2008: Dole losing by quite a bit, although McConnell only beating a very weak, scandal-ridden C-lister 53%-47% was also pretty surprising (and frustrating in hindsight b/c he probably would’ve lost to an A-list opponent like Ben Chandler or Steve Beasher and the country would be in a far better place as a result).  

2010: Harry Reid defying political gravity

2012: No one saw Heitkamp’s win coming

2014: Warner nearly losing

2016: Ron Johnson winning re-election

2018: No good options, so I guess Sherrod Brown beating an extremely weak opponent by only like 6% instead of double-digits or at least high single-digits.  Nelson losing was a disappointment, but Nelson ran an abysmal campaign and some on Atlas (especially FL posters) were already saying he could lose by like July of 2018.  

2020: Tillis winning re-election, a lot of folks thought Cunningham would eek out a win and I remember being pretty widely mocked for arguing that his scandal would really hurt him (the Atlas consensus seemed to be that voters wouldn’t care b/c “something, something Donald Trump”).  You could also make a case for Bullock losing in a landslide in what was widely considered a pure tossup or Tilt R race, but given how off the polls were, that one would’ve been easier to predict but for polling error whereas the Cunningham loss* was due to an unforeseeable factor whose impact was widely underestimated.

*which has spawned tons of revisionist history about how the DSCC somehow forced him upon voters even though Cunningham was basically their last choice after Foxx, Stein, Allen Joines, and Cooper declined, Colwell’s skeletons came out, Jackson insisted on the bold strategy of “if I run, I will do almost literally no fundraising b/c campaign ads don’t matter.”  That left us with either Cunningham or a random DINO state rep who was clearly running as an R plant (Erica Smith), not much of a choice imo.  

The fact that C-list Cunningham clearly would’ve won but for the scandal despite being the personification of a bland C-lister also shows the DSCC had the right strategy here, Cunningham simply turned out to be an idiot who couldn’t keep it in his pants.  The DSCC has screwed up races before (ex: not pushing the Nelson campaign to get its act together and taking WI for granted in 2016), but this wasn’t one of them.  But I digress…

I don’t see how Cunningham would have won given Trump held onto NC.

Even with Cunningham's scandal, Tillis failed to break 49%. Had he not been morally bankrupt, Cunningham would've won, possibly even with a slim majority of the vote statewide. The fact that Cunningham managed 47% even with all the nasty and hypocritical exploitation of his own family for the purposes of running a fake character campaign indicates to me that Tillis may have been nearly as vulnerable as McSally.
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« Reply #20 on: October 18, 2021, 03:22:40 PM »

I really don’t see how ND-SEN 2012 qualifies as an "upset" or a result "no one saw coming." Literally every pre-election poll except one showed an extremely close race (with both candidates trading leads and polling close to 50%), and all the major prognosticators had the race listed as a Tossup (Sabato moved it to Lean R only when they had to pick a winner in each race, Rothenberg only moved it Tossup/Tilt R).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_Senate_election_in_North_Dakota#Polling_2
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« Reply #21 on: October 18, 2021, 03:30:54 PM »

I really don’t see how ND-SEN 2012 qualifies as an "upset" or a result "no one saw coming." Literally every pre-election poll except one showed an extremely close race (with both candidates trading leads and polling close to 50%), and all the major prognosticators had the race listed as a Tossup (Sabato moved it to Lean R only when they had to pick a winner in each race, Rothenberg only moved it Tossup/Tilt R).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_Senate_election_in_North_Dakota#Polling_2

TBF, Cook moves everything to Tossup. 
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« Reply #22 on: October 18, 2021, 04:37:41 PM »

2000/2010: Hillary Clinton/Kirsten Gillibrand not getting serious primary challengers would strike me as good answers. One, not only was a carpetbagger, but had some pretty clear ethical issues. If Nita Lowey had stuck to her plan to run in 2000, and tried to run against Hillary in the Democratic Primary, I think she beats the First Lady. As for Gillibrand, how nobody ended up running against her in 2010 is a mystery to me. Both Carolyn McCarthy and Harold Ford Jr, really wanted to, and there was clearly room in the primary for someone to Gillibrand's left to run and suck up most of the vote, especially in New York City. If say, Andrew Cuomo had decided to run for Senate instead of for Governor, he wins by at least twenty points in the primary.
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Orser67
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #23 on: October 18, 2021, 07:45:37 PM »

List below doesn't count special elections unless they were held concurrently with regular elections:

2020: The Democratic dual-win in the GA special elections. HM: Susan Collins winning
2018: Bill Nelson losing
2016: Ron Johnson winning
2014: Cory Gardner winning. HM: Mark Pryor getting blown out
2012: Heitkamp winning
2010: Mark Kirk winning. HM: Harry Reid winning
2008: Al Franken winning
2006: Jim Webb winning
2004: Thune winning
2002: Norm Coleman winning (plus Wellstone's death during the campaign)
2000: Mel Carnahan winning post-humously
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progressive85
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #24 on: October 19, 2021, 12:27:19 AM »

1980: Matt Mattingly defeating Herman Talmadge in Georgia
1982: Jerry Brown losing by nearly 7 points in California
1984: Mitch McConnell winning in Kentucky
1986: Slade Gorton losing in Washington
1988: The Democrat coming so close in Wyoming
1990: Paul Wellstone winning in Minnesota
1992: Fritz Hollings nearly losing in South Carolina
1994: Fred Thompson winning Tenneesse in a landslide
1996: Tim Hutchinson winning in Arkansas
1998: John Edwards winning in North Carolina
2000: John Ashcroft losing to a Dead candidate
2002: Tim Hutchinson losing in Arkansas
2004: Jim Bunning nearly losing in Kentucky
2006: Really nothing but id say Jim Webb winning in Virginia
2008: Elizabeth Dole losing by 8 points in North Carolina
2010: Scott Brown winning the senate race in Massachusetts(Dems losing in Illions was actually expected)
2012: Heidi Heitkamp winning in North Dakota
2014: Mark Warner nearly losing in Virginia
2016: Jason Kander nearly winning  in Missouri
2018: Doug Jones winning the Alabama Special(Yes its 2017 but nothing else was a surprise really)
2020: Susan Collins winning so easily in Maine

I'll go back in time:

2020:

Yes I really thought ME was going to vote for Grandpa Joe (it did) but also those same voters would not vote for Susan Collins again.

Also Thom Tillis...eww... Please.  If Trump wins in 2024, that's the first flip I call in '26.  That this dude has served two terms is a joke.  Cal Cunningham couldn't keep it in his pants, what was the thing there that might have did him in?  I guess NC staying red did him in too.

2018:

I think what surprised me the most was that Bill Nelson lost it so badly, FL is a very close state and I just don't get Rick Scott's appeal at all (can someone explain what's so sexy about this man that FL voters have since 2010 been showering him with love?).  Nelson's campaign was bad I know that but dang the guy had NASA cred, like Mark Kelly... maybe the astronauts that voted him in have all died?

Also Debbie Stabenow did terribly.  MI had voted so far to the left in '08 and she's always been considered a solid re-elect, so what happened?  It wasn't even a red year!

2016:

CA: I just wonder if Loretta (who was considered in the 90s a big star and giant killer for toppling Bob Dornan in Orange County) had been a stronger candidate and beaten Kamala, which could have been done, who would be the VP now?

NH: Maggie barely won in '16, and that's not a good sign for '22 if the Gov runs.  I noticed that NH likes to elect Guvs senator after they're done with Guv (trivia: how many NH Governors have gone on later to serve in the Senate?).

WI: I get that Trump won and that really helped Ron keep his seat, and also Senators that lose rarely win again six years later in rematches, but Ron Johnson might as well be representing Brooks Brothers in the Senate, he really is from the Scott Walker "pro-business", anti-worker "starve the beast"/"defund the left" line of politicians.
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