Georgia Senate race cliffhanger

[thekev]

Now #KKKelly is trending on Twitter.

Couldn't happen to a nicer soul.

I like how you picked up a variation of one of the lines I frequently use. Osoff is even better at trolling than me though. I couldn't have worked "Ku Cucks Klan" in with a straight face.

 

[ronntaylor]

Still there has been a surge in D reggies before the cutoff since the November elections, and a lot of early voting as well.

That said, I am not holding my breath and certainly not giving credence to polls. I'd love to see at least one flip though.

Right! More than 2.5M early votes. More than 75K new early voters since the General elections, with Stacey Abrams saying that many (most?) of those Dems. And some GOP strongholds at 47-50% compared to the same timeframe during the General Election. Election Day will be crucial. Dems need a strong showing on the day.

Wouldn't surprise me if the GA GOP operates like Dems of the past: Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Potential Victory with many of them braying about Mango = writing him in or staying home.

 

[User.45]

Still there has been a surge in D reggies before the cutoff since the November elections, and a lot of early voting as well.

That said, I am not holding my breath and certainly not giving credence to polls. I'd love to see at least one flip though.

Eyes on the midterms, the odds will flip there:
WI*, PA, and NC R's are not seeking re-election. Missouri's and Florida's seats were tight in the past.
On the other hand New Hampshire, and AZ will be wobbly for the D's.
So will be Loeffler's GA seat.

 

[ronntaylor]

Eyes on the midterms, the odds will flip there:
WA, PA, and NC R's are not seeking re-election. Missouri's and Florida's seats were tight in the past.
On the other hand New Hampshire, and AZ will be wobbly for the D's.
So will be Loeffler's GA seat.

IMO, it's too early to predict 2022 with the runoffs in GA not yet decided, and Biden-Harris and US Congress facing a perilous 2021. However, the party facing the greater number of battles has more to lose. With at least four GOP vacancies and a couple more Octogenarians possibly retiring, anything can happen.

 

[User.45]

IMO, it's too early to predict 2022 with the runoffs in GA not yet decided, and Biden-Harris and US Congress facing a perilous 2021. However, the party facing the greater number of battles has more to lose. With at least four GOP vacancies and a couple more Octogenarians possibly retiring, anything can happen.

Honestly. Studies show that D's vote based on policies by their representatives. R's vote based on affiliation. (i'll dig up the reference here). But this means that R's with wide margin victories are much safer than D's with similar margins. Current R senators in WI/PA/NC had single digit margins and announced they won't seek re-election. So they won't even have an incumbent advantage. Which means an an edge for Ds. If D's don't hold the senate, I think they'll be able to generate a mini blue wave that is enough to flip these 3 states and defend NH, AZ (GA) based on the campaign focused on "look how awful McConnell is". And this strategy will work because McConnell now faces bipartisan hate. So I'd say if Ds perform poorly in the next 2 years, they'll deflect to McConnell and it will work. The situation would be different if A) Ds won the senate in Jan. or B) the economy did so extraordinarily well, people would think it's more important to keep the Dems in check.

 

[lizkat]

I'm not thrilled that of new women in the House for the 117th session, there are 18 Republicans and 9 Democrats...

‘Badasses in Their Own Right’: Meet the Freshwomen of Congress

We’re about to see a record number of women in the House of Representatives, including the largest class of female Republicans. And the new members have a lot to say.

www.politico.com

 

[SuperMatt]

I'm not thrilled that of new women in the House for the 117th session, there are 18 Republicans and 9 Democrats...

‘Badasses in Their Own Right’: Meet the Freshwomen of Congress

We’re about to see a record number of women in the House of Representatives, including the largest class of female Republicans. And the new members have a lot to say.

www.politico.com

To put it into context though - in the 116th congress, there were 88 Democratic women and only 13 women on the Republican side. The total numbers for the 117th House are 89 Democrats and 28 Republicans.

 

[User.45]

I'm not thrilled that of new women in the House for the 117th session, there are 18 Republicans and 9 Democrats...

‘Badasses in Their Own Right’: Meet the Freshwomen of Congress

We’re about to see a record number of women in the House of Representatives, including the largest class of female Republicans. And the new members have a lot to say.

www.politico.com

Honestly? The Conservative subreddit is already self-highfiving, yet this leap takes the GOP's house representation of women to a whopping 14%. That's 40% for the Democrats.

 

[User.45]

To put it into context though - in the 116th congress, there were 88 Democratic women and only 13 women on the Republican side. The total numbers for the 117th House are 89 Democrats and 28 Republicans.

Beat me to it.

 

[thekev]

I'm not thrilled that of new women in the House for the 117th session, there are 18 Republicans and 9 Democrats...

‘Badasses in Their Own Right’: Meet the Freshwomen of Congress

We’re about to see a record number of women in the House of Representatives, including the largest class of female Republicans. And the new members have a lot to say.

www.politico.com

Why? The democratic party tends to actively encourage women to run for office. It's a core part of their brand.

I would also view this as somewhat of an incomplete picture. You may be seeing a certain amount of survivorship bias, as this doesn't account for female candidates who did not win their respective races.

 

[SuperMatt]

Why? The democratic party tends to actively encourage women to run for office. It's a core part of their brand.

I would also view this as somewhat of an incomplete picture. You may be seeing a certain amount of survivorship bias, as this doesn't account for female candidates who did not win their respective races.

Female Republicans in Congress is a “new” thing in 2020... that’s a pretty sad statement about how bass-ackwards their party truly is.

 

[thekev]

Female Republicans in Congress is a “new” thing in 2020... that’s a pretty sad statement about how bass-ackwards their party truly is.

They aren't new in any sense, even with the Republican party. The Democratic party tends to be much more sympathetic to women's issues, so I would expect more female political candidates to gravitate toward it.

As I mentioned though, you may be seeing some survivorship bias as well.

 

[lizkat]

I said what I said because it looks like even though the GOP is ostensibly in bed with Donald Trump, its leadership in the trenches of the RNC and the state committees did not forget that after analyzing their 2012 losses, it had then launched a concerted effort to broaden its base, especially among women and people of color.

That was more than somewhat derailed when Trump got the nomination from the GOP in 2016. But after seeing the blue drift in 2018, and noting that a lot of it was women unhappy with Trump, they clearly got back on their post-2012 playbook game and resumed trying to recruit women to run for Congress.

But of course the Republican women I had in mind were not necessarily those who took up the challenge and decided it was time to run for office. Some of the new GOP women in the 117th Congress are as fringe as their male counterparts in the 116th.

Meanwhile what's with the Dems losing downballot seats overall in a year when they were hell bent on extending their reach.

There is still something wrong with the way the DNC operates and it's not just with respect to wanting to recycle safe star choices at the top. The progressives made some headway in 2018, yes, but it's obvious they must continue doing the heavy lifting for Dems in the department of benchbuilding in local and state campaigns. The DNC is still too focused on star power for the White House, and even the importance of limiting Trump to one term does not excuse that tunnel vision in my book; they've been doing it for decades.

And sure, it's not just about female candidates or those of color, it's about making actual connections to real people all over the country, whether in urban or rural areas. Dems talk all the time about getting federal investment that helps ordinary people.

Sometimes it's less about federal dollars and more about elbow grease at the local level Talk is cheaper than ever. Showing up is what really counts. Stacey Abrams proved that with a vibrant reggie and get out the vote effort AND THEN the Dems congratulated her and themselves on having such great grassroots power. But the DNC is already talking about who the Dems might face for the presidential race in 2024. The GOP, bank on it, is focused on the next round of statehouse elections, even while Georgia votes today in the runoff election for those two US Senate seats. Sure they're concerned about fractures in their party at the national level. But they never forget their state level bases. The Dems only remember theirs when national elections roll around again.

 

[User.45]

I said what I said because it looks like even though the GOP is ostensibly in bed with Donald Trump, its leadership in the trenches of the RNC and the state committees did not forget that after analyzing their 2012 losses, it had then launched a concerted effort to broaden its base, especially among women and people of color.

That was more than somewhat derailed when Trump got the nomination from the GOP in 2016. But after seeing the blue drift in 2018, and noting that a lot of it was women unhappy with Trump, they clearly got back on their post-2012 playbook game and resumed trying to recruit women to run for Congress.

But of course the Republican women I had in mind were not necessarily those who took up the challenge and decided it was time to run for office. Some of the new GOP women in the 117th Congress are as fringe as their male counterparts in the 116th.

Meanwhile what's with the Dems losing downballot seats overall in a year when they were hell bent on extending their reach.

There is still something wrong with the way the DNC operates and it's not just with respect to wanting to recycle safe star choices at the top. The progressives made some headway in 2018, yes, but it's obvious they must continue doing the heavy lifting for Dems in the department of benchbuilding in local and state campaigns. The DNC is still too focused on star power for the White House, and even the importance of limiting Trump to one term does not excuse that tunnel vision in my book; they've been doing it for decades.

And sure, it's not just about female candidates or those of color, it's about making actual connections to real people all over the country, whether in urban or rural areas. Dems talk all the time about getting federal investment that helps ordinary people.

Sometimes it's less about federal dollars and more about elbow grease at the local level Talk is cheaper than ever. Showing up is what really counts. Stacey Abrams proved that with a vibrant reggie and get out the vote effort AND THEN the Dems congratulated her and themselves on having such great grassroots power. But the DNC is already talking about who the Dems might face for the presidential race in 2024. The GOP, bank on it, is focused on the next round of statehouse elections, even while Georgia votes today in the runoff election for those two US Senate seats. Sure they're concerned about fractures in their party at the national level. But they never forget their state level bases. The Dems only remember theirs when national elections roll around again.

I'm trying to extract some exit polling data which is nearly impossible with 1 million mail-in ballot votes.

There seem to be 122K voters who sat out the presidential election (roughly 3%). There are also about 1-2% third party voters pooled in. With all the misery with Trump I suspect that the GOP voter pool didn't expand and the new voters favor Ossoff and Warnock. However, the questions's gonna be whether this is sufficient to offset the 1-2% third party voters who'll go GOP this time around. My money's on 1R 1D. It's slightly favorable from a strategic stand point if the win would go to Ossoff as Loeffler's seat will be up again in 2022 (as far as I understand). Regardless, a net flip of 1 seat sounds certain then, 2 seats aren't necessarily straight forward, but still very feasible.

 

[Alli]

I’m already sitting in front of the telly watching election results starring Steve Kornacki. This is for all the marbles.

 

[thekev]

I said what I said because it looks like even though the GOP is ostensibly in bed with Donald Trump, its leadership in the trenches of the RNC and the state committees did not forget that after analyzing their 2012 losses, it had then launched a concerted effort to broaden its base, especially among women and people of color.

That was more than somewhat derailed when Trump got the nomination from the GOP in 2016. But after seeing the blue drift in 2018, and noting that a lot of it was women unhappy with Trump, they clearly got back on their post-2012 playbook game and resumed trying to recruit women to run for Congress.

But of course the Republican women I had in mind were not necessarily those who took up the challenge and decided it was time to run for office. Some of the new GOP women in the 117th Congress are as fringe as their male counterparts in the 116th.

This is not particularly surprising to me. I would have to look a bit closer at the races, but I would expect a lot of conservative female candidates to end up as red state democratic candidates instead.

Sometimes it's less about federal dollars and more about elbow grease at the local level Talk is cheaper than ever. Showing up is what really counts. Stacey Abrams proved that with a vibrant reggie and get out the vote effort AND THEN the Dems congratulated her and themselves on having such great grassroots power. But the DNC is already talking about who the Dems might face for the presidential race in 2024. The GOP, bank on it, is focused on the next round of statehouse elections, even while Georgia votes today in the runoff election for those two US Senate seats. Sure they're concerned about fractures in their party at the national level. But they never forget their state level bases. The Dems only remember theirs when national elections roll around again.

I agree with you, it's annoying. Democrats often don't fare well in midterm elections, possibly in part due to lower turnout. It's possible they already expect midterm elections to be a flop. COVID should be under control by that time, and they'll have a couple more years of Biden gaffs to splice into the attack ads.

 

[User.45]

Interesting race. Both Loeffler and Perdue up momentarily, but the NYT now estimates Warnock to have a 3 to 1, and Ossoff to have a 2 to 1 odds of winning. That is based on their estimate of the distribution in the remaining votes.

Remember, when I preprojected the Georgia and Wisconsin win? The NYT was the first to reflect those odds. I think they use some kind of Bayesian statistical analysis method for this. It seems pretty sophisticated.

 

[User.45]

The next bets we should place on the number of recounts will be requested...

 

[lizkat]

This is not particularly surprising to me. I would have to look a bit closer at the races, but I would expect a lot of conservative female candidates to end up as red state democratic candidates instead.

I expected some Asian or Hispanic Republican females to win their House races in 2020, particularly for seats that only flipped blue in 2018 and were specifically targeted by the GOP as takeback goals, keeping in mind that it was sometimes Republican female conservative voters (reggied to either or no party) who had flipped those seats blue in 2018.

What I did not really expect was that fringe right Republican females would win House seats in the general election in 2020.

For awhile it had started to look like it was getting harder for far right primary winners to prevail in the fall, particularly in red districts where a blue dog Democrat had the seat as of 2018, or was running in 2020 to replace a retiring Dem. But the Trump era has seemed to make it easier for the Rs to move farther right again in successive House elections.

They have quite a collection of reality show characters in there now, the Republicans, whether male or female. I am not sure they'll play so well in the atmosphere of a House still led by the Dems but now working with a Dem in the White House, and Biden --unlike Trump-- actually knows the ins and outs of legislative maneuvers in both House and Senate.

But, sigh... the media may not be done relying on the clickbait value of antics by the likes of Nunes and Jordan to sell papers, and now they have not only Marjorie Taylor Greene but the Glock-toter Lauren Boebert (with an interesting history of her own encounters with law enforcement in the past) to continue to showcase if they think their revenue streams need a boost.

 

[User.45]

If you guys look at the estimated votes reported, you can see what NYT's prediction is based on. This is already significantly better than my expectations.