Most Stunning Senate Result in every election since 1980 (user search)
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  Most Stunning Senate Result in every election since 1980 (search mode)
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Author Topic: Most Stunning Senate Result in every election since 1980  (Read 2136 times)
Chancellor Tanterterg
Mr. X
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« 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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