Why did Dems try to save Mark Pryor in 2014 after seeing 2010?

[Attorney General, Senator-Elect, & Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

Pryor was polling well throughout 2013 and early 2014. There was also a belief that 2010 was a once in a lifetime level wave and that Blanche Lincoln had been unusually tainted by her 2010 primary battle.

[Fancyarcher]

Yeah, this made no sense. In fact, Mark Pryor was going to lose regardless of who the President was.

Eh that's debatable. I could see Pryor holding on by the skin of his teeth if Romney had won in 2012. Would depend on how bad the national environment is for the GOP, and if Pryor still faced Cotton or someone else.

I don't think the national environment would have made a darn difference to be honest. Arkansas was simply too red by the point, and Obama's presence likely poisoned ticket splitting. At best Pryor would have lost by high single digits in a good environment, in my opinion.  

how did Kent Conrad and Ben Nelson easily win reelection in Bush +20 states in 2006?

Blue wave year and there was less polarization.

it was only eight years between 2006 and 2014. If you had an unpopular president Romney in 2014, would there really be that much of a difference between those eight years?

We had a President Trump in 2018 who was probably significantly more unpopular than a President Romney ever would have been, and 4 incumbent Democrats lost re-election, 3 of which were in states less Republican than Arkansas. No doubt Pryor was going to lose in 2014 whether Obama or Romney were President.

so are you saying 2010 changed everything then?

Obama's election for a lot of unfortunate reasons, basically made historical Democrats, who started voting Republican presidential-wise, realize what the modern Democratic Party really represented.

For example, you mentioned Kent Conrad, and Ben Nelson. I don't think it's a coincidence that both of them retired six years later. The national environment had changed massively overnight.

nelson, due to being seen as the 60th vote with the cornhusker kickback, was effectively f-cked. Conrad on the other hand probably gets 58-59 percent of the vote in 2012. Don't forget that, against all odds, the dems managed to retain that seat.

I think Conrad holds up, because Heitkamp won that year, but by no more than 4 to 5%. It's a genuinely competitive race, compared to his previous ones. Nelson would have lost irregardless, though.

[freepcrusher]

someone should do an analysis of what wave patterns look like. For instance I felt 1974 1994 and even 2006 had sort of a random distribution, the best metaphor would be like an epidemic like that in 1918 - some lived and some didn't.

2010-14-18 felt more like either a tornado or a plane crash where you have a decent amount of survivors (which does happen on occasion). In the case of the tornado you had the areas straight in the path and other areas that were in the radius where the survival rate was higher and areas completely out of the damage path. In the case of a plane crash you have instances like Delta 191 where all the survivors clustered in the back (because it broke off before doing a head on crash) or American 1420 where almost everyone survived and all the people killed were clustered near where the plane broke apart.

[Roll Roons]

What do you expect Dems to do and to say to Mark Pryor? "Meh, you're worthless. Go ahead and lose; what do we care?"

Obviously they won’t use that exact language, but at the House level, parties do cut off incumbents whose races are considered hopeless.

-O’Halleran and Malinowski in 2022
-Coffman, Yoder and Rothfus in 2018
-Driehaus, Dahlkemper and Kosmas in 2010

The fact that Malinowski, who only ended up losing by 3, is on this list should be warning enough against overzealous triage of incumbents.

It’s weird. Going by spending, Republican internals seemed to be showing something close to the environment we actually got while Democratic internals seemed to show the red wave that never happened. Republicans spent a lot on races like AZ-06 and MI-10 which ended up being close, while Democrats spent nothing on those and instead dumped a ton into seats like AZ-04, which was a blowout.

[henster]

someone should do an analysis of what wave patterns look like. For instance I felt 1974 1994 and even 2006 had sort of a random distribution, the best metaphor would be like an epidemic like that in 1918 - some lived and some didn't.

2010-14-18 felt more like either a tornado or a plane crash where you have a decent amount of survivors (which does happen on occasion). In the case of the tornado you had the areas straight in the path and other areas that were in the radius where the survival rate was higher and areas completely out of the damage path. In the case of a plane crash you have instances like Delta 191 where all the survivors clustered in the back (because it broke off before doing a head on crash) or American 1420 where almost everyone survived and all the people killed were clustered near where the plane broke apart.

ISIS and Ebola caused the bottom to fall out for Dems in 2014 with ebola being the final nail in the coffin. Things were already heading south with the faulty Obamacare rollout. Which if it were kept at that then there'd probably be more nominal losses. But it ended up being a perform storm for the GOP.

[darklordoftech]

Pryor was to the right of Manchin and Toomey on guns, so maybe Democrats thought Pryor could hold on to the single-issue "they're taking our guns" voters?

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think a big part of why that no one here has mentioned yet is Dem spending tends to heavily favor incumbents. I remember I made a thread about this a while back and how I was upset Dems were spending on House seats they were never going to lose/never going to win but barely invested in seats like AZ-01, AZ-06, CA-45, ect which didn't have Dem incumbents.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

someone should do an analysis of what wave patterns look like. For instance I felt 1974 1994 and even 2006 had sort of a random distribution, the best metaphor would be like an epidemic like that in 1918 - some lived and some didn't.

2010-14-18 felt more like either a tornado or a plane crash where you have a decent amount of survivors (which does happen on occasion). In the case of the tornado you had the areas straight in the path and other areas that were in the radius where the survival rate was higher and areas completely out of the damage path. In the case of a plane crash you have instances like Delta 191 where all the survivors clustered in the back (because it broke off before doing a head on crash) or American 1420 where almost everyone survived and all the people killed were clustered near where the plane broke apart.

ISIS and Ebola caused the bottom to fall out for Dems in 2014 with ebola being the final nail in the coffin. Things were already heading south with the faulty Obamacare rollout. Which if it were kept at that then there'd probably be more nominal losses. But it ended up being a perform storm for the GOP.

It's kind of crazy in hindsight that Ebola played that big of a role in the 2014 elections when there wasn't a single case of Ebola acquired in the United States outside of nurses directly treating an Ebola patient.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

someone should do an analysis of what wave patterns look like. For instance I felt 1974 1994 and even 2006 had sort of a random distribution, the best metaphor would be like an epidemic like that in 1918 - some lived and some didn't.

2010-14-18 felt more like either a tornado or a plane crash where you have a decent amount of survivors (which does happen on occasion). In the case of the tornado you had the areas straight in the path and other areas that were in the radius where the survival rate was higher and areas completely out of the damage path. In the case of a plane crash you have instances like Delta 191 where all the survivors clustered in the back (because it broke off before doing a head on crash) or American 1420 where almost everyone survived and all the people killed were clustered near where the plane broke apart.

ISIS and Ebola caused the bottom to fall out for Dems in 2014 with ebola being the final nail in the coffin. Things were already heading south with the faulty Obamacare rollout. Which if it were kept at that then there'd probably be more nominal losses. But it ended up being a perform storm for the GOP.

It's kind of crazy in hindsight that Ebola played that big of a role in the 2014 elections when there wasn't a single case of Ebola acquired in the United States outside of nurses directly treating an Ebola patient.

It really didn’t, I don’t think it effected a single race in a meaningful way.  Same with ISIS.  What killed the Democrats in 2014 was that Obama built a coalition that was exceptionally poorly suited to non-Presidential years and didn’t give a crap about the strength or quality of state Democratic parties.