MT-AL: Rob Quist (D) vs. Greg Gianforte (R) vs. Mark Wicks (L), May 25

[Tender Branson]

Yeah, this is probably a 3-point race now.

A couple months ago, I thought R+8 to R+10. But Gianforte seems to be a weak candidate.

I wouldn't be surprised if Quist pulls this out on Thursday ...

[Tender Branson]

I have no clue what's going on, but I'm still sticking with an R-win by 2-6 points.

[Tender Branson]

Gianforte will still win ...

Now more than ever.

All the shy Rs will be like:

"What ? He punched some librul, fake-news reporter ? Let's vote for him !"

[Tender Branson]

Is there any way that Montana Republicans can remove Gianforte and add some other Republican?

The election is today and a good 200k votes have been sent in already.

250k actually.

[Tender Branson]

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/early-turnout-at-metrapark-polls-is-light-despite-gianforte-s/article_ec11bb83-c76e-51a5-bf93-f11b9f1f6c2d.html

couldn't that be a sign of republican depression?

Not necessarily. It could only mean that people liked to vote by mail, rather than at the precinct. If a lot of people vote by mail, not many additional voters will vote at the precinct.

[Tender Branson]

http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/early-turnout-at-metrapark-polls-is-light-despite-gianforte-s/article_ec11bb83-c76e-51a5-bf93-f11b9f1f6c2d.html

couldn't that be a sign of republican depression?

Oh, not saying this is good news for anyone, but someone asked for "early turnout reports".

@Arch: NYTimes, Decision Desk and the SOS page are all good websites. Also the AP if you don't care about the county by county results.

The AP site has both the statewide results, as well as the county-by-county results ...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2017/by_state/MT_Page_0525.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=POLITICS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/elections/2017/by_county/MT_Page_0525.html?SITE=AP&SECTION=POLITICS

[Tender Branson]

Still Gianforte.

By about 3-10%.

Right in the middle ...

[Tender Branson]

There's still GA-06, where I see the chances for Ossoff as high as never before ...

KS and MT were simply too Trumpist.

[Tender Branson]

There's still GA-06, where I see the chances for Ossoff as high as never before ...

KS and MT were simply too Trumpist.

You're in for a terribly depressing night if you think Ossoff is going to win.

Well, of course he might lose.

But under the circumstances he's a strong fit for this district and Handel is a rather weak candidate.

I'm currently about 80-85% sure he'll win.

[Tender Branson]

Since only small Glacier is left, it's pretty easy to project the final statewide results:

50.2% Gianforte (+/- 0.1%)
44.2% Quist (+/- 0.1%)
  5.6% Wicks (+/- 0.1%)
 
Gianforte wins by 6%.

[Tender Branson]

This result was absolutely disgusting.

Why ?

It's almost a 10-point swing from Juneau 2016 (D) to Quist 2017 (D) and a 14-point swing from Hillary to Quist.

You cannot expect to erase 15-20 point R-leads in a R-state like KS or MT over a few months.

These swings bode really well for Ossoff though, because the Atlanta suburbs are far more allergic to Trump than KS or MT.

[Tender Branson]

I guess we won't get separate results for mail-voting and election day voting ?

Mail-voting was 70% of the overall vote. It would be nice to see the difference ...

[Tender Branson]

I mean come on, democrats improved by 14 points compared with Hillary. It's not a bad result.

Exactly.  The Democrats are outperforming Clinton in these specials.  If this trend keeps up, they'll be in fine shape next year.  The thing some people seem to overlook is that this year's group of specials isn't a representative sample of House districts.  They've all been in Republican-leaning districts, for the simple reason that they replaced Republican incumbents appointed to other positions by a Republican president.

Republican-"leaning" ?

KS and MT were more like Safe-R districts ...

And GA-06 would also be Safe-R, if it weren't for Trump being toxic in the Northern Atlanta suburbs (look at Price's results there).

In this context, the DEM results so far were pretty good.

[Tender Branson]

Did mail ballots actually end up being 70% of all votes cast, or was it lower?

Slightly more than 70% ...

Total mail ballots returned: 276.203

Total turnout: 379.763 (72.7%)