GA-06 and SC-05 election day & results thread

[Adam Griffin]

Yeah, the main page of SoS will have a link up front and center shortly before 7 PM. It may also show up here, but I can't recall if it shows up there immediately or sometime after.

[Adam Griffin]

Any of our resident experts on GA-06 know which areas tend to report votes earlier/later?

Also, do they tend to dump EVs separately at the very beginning or include with individual precinct results as a consolidated total?

Just like in most GA elections, the early vote in each of the counties will dump to varying degrees over the first hour, then Cobb and North Dekalb will likely start coming in in large chunks after 8 PM (with Cobb fully wrapping up after Dekalb), and Fulton will inevitably screw something up and be late as hell tallying all of its votes. Fulton also has the longest distance for poll workers to drive to report results, so that factors in as well.

Depending on how streamlined early vote counting is, we may not have anything reported before 7:30-7:45.

[Adam Griffin]

I see nobody saw the posts that these early vote numbers are just in-person early vote, and doesn't including the Dem-leaning mail votes.

How many are there?

[Adam Griffin]

Ossoff probably ends up with 52-53% of the EV in Fulton once mail ballots are counted.

[Adam Griffin]

Ossoff got 45.3% and 60.2% and of the in-person EV in Cobb and Dekalb respectively.

Are we sure this is all the EV out of Cobb/Dekalb? It looks a bit low in comparison to Fulton.

[Adam Griffin]

Handel still holding just inside of recanvass range:

Karen Handel (Republican)    50.4%   65,371
Jon Ossoff (Democratic)    49.6%   64,243

[Adam Griffin]

Jesus, why is SoS so far behind? NYT is always garbage in that regard, but SoS is like 20 minutes behind DDHQ at this point.

[Adam Griffin]

Can we stop this stupid "Pelosi" meme? Even veteran GOP strategists have said that the Pelosi attack angle has produced ZERO proof of improving GOP vote-share in elections like these. There's virtually nobody who's going to bother voting in a mid-term or special election who both a) doesn't know who Pelosi is and b) suddenly hear about her and go "oh, now I have to vote". Think logically.

[Adam Griffin]

Can we stop this stupid "Pelosi" meme? Even veteran GOP strategists have said that the Pelosi attack angle has produced ZERO proof of improving GOP vote-share in elections like these. There's virtually nobody who's going to bother voting in a mid-term or special election who both a) doesn't know who Pelosi is and b) suddenly hear about her and go "oh, now I have to vote". Think logically.

I think losing elections over and over again is all the proof you need. Why Democrats didn't turn Handel into "the woman who supports killing cancer patients" is lost on me

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Correlation =/= causation, especially with such a loose one. "Oh somebody's in an insignificant office that 99.8% of the country has never voted for/against so that's why were losing". Maybe - just maybe - we're losing because of other, substantive reasons?

We lost GA-6 because it's filled with Southern suburbanites who decided to vote how they've always voted.

[Adam Griffin]

Guys, save your angst for when we actually have elections where the Democratic House candidate in normal elections hasn't regularly lost by 20+ points.

[Adam Griffin]

Just leaving this here...

Just correcting this wack-ass image that uses DCCC funding for Group A and total contributions (including small donations) for Ossoff; that uses presidential results instead of House results because it self-cherrypicks the data-points for the narrative they want

[Adam Griffin]

Speaking of comparing House races to presidential ones...

[Adam Griffin]

In the end, Ossoff received the exact same % of the vote he got in round 1 - 48.1%. All that money to get the same exact % of the vote. What a complete waste. Democrats should have never tried in this seat.

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[Adam Griffin]

Trump won the district by only 1.5 points. The Democrats spent $30 million to have the margin be worse than the 2016 Presidential, and Ossoff get a lower percentage of the vote than in the first round.

Who gives a f[inks] what Trump won it by? This is an election for House, not for President. The last Republican to run for this seat - in 2016 - won by 23 points. The Republican in this race won it by (apparently now) 4 points. That's a 19 point swing. Compare that to Quist's paltry 9 point swing and Thompson's larger 23 point swing.

And again, you're either being completely obtuse or disingenous. DCCC contributed $6m to Ossoff; a few hundred thousand to the other two. In total money raised/spent, Ossoff raised more than $20m; Quist had around $10m spent on his behalf and broke all previous Montana records. If anything, the amount spent on Quist's race was more obscene than Ossoff's because of the relative costs of media/campaigning in the two districts.

That dumbass image is purposefully lying. You don't come up with those figures unless you're deliberately trying to mislead. You either compare one group of figures consistently or the other; you don't mix them up so that they all display the best outcome for your pissy narrative.

[Adam Griffin]

Ossoff get a lower percentage of the vote than in the first round.

Oh, and here's another dumb narrative already circulating on jfern Twitter that's pure BS:

April: 48.12%
June: 48.13%

[Adam Griffin]

Thank you for posting a quote that validates the idea that dems shouldn't have tried in this seat.

Virginia, Holmes, I understand you guys have obligations to spin this however you can, but let's face it, your party threw everything but the kitchen sink at this race and didn't gain a single tenth of a percentage point over round 1. You aren't winning this in '18, and you're not winning the 7th or some other seat in GA either. If the house  will have a dem majority, it will be because seats flipped elsewhere - the GA  delegation will be unchanged.

Ultimately, throwing the kitchen sink at it was what likely caused the problem. The massive amount of spending - brought on by the fact that virtually nothing else interesting to donors on both sides was going on - increased attention and awareness for the race by so much that it ultimately dragged out several thousand more Republicans in the second round than it did Democrats. This race had 25% more voters than the previous midterm. In an environment where Democratic enthusiasm remains but there are 435 of these elections occurring simultaneously, things might look a bit different. I'm sure there isn't going to be $50 million spent on this race in 2018.

[Adam Griffin]

OK, but still not as good a margin as Hillary. And Trump probably did better in the median district than GA-06.

You're still not grasping that this district is notoriously more GOP down-ballot than it is at the top of the ticket and that comparing against presidential results is useless. This is a trend that goes back years and years. I wrote about it on here months ago when I said I thought Ossoff would lose. Kerry, Obama and Clinton alike have easily over-performed all down-ballot Democrats in huge portions of the northern metro by anywhere from 5-20 points. The fact that Ossoff even managed to get above 42% is indicative of him making significant ground against that trend.

[Adam Griffin]

The last candidate was a nobody with no money. So it's not really relevant. The Presidential numbers are more relevant, especially if you're using the fact that Hillary did so much better than Obama in this district to double down on the rich sunbelt district strategy. For $30 million, you could have done better than normal in many races, rather than just 1 that you still lost.

You lack basic understanding of Southern politics. It doesn't matter if it's a "nobody" or a well-known commodity: a literal dildo (D) and a legacy candidate (D) are going to generally be right alongside one another with respect to their shares of the vote in an identical race. This is a very inelastic area.

Ultimately, there are several independent dynamics at work here - along with the infrastructure of the Ossoff campaign - that lead to a significant over-performance for a candidate not seeking the Presidency. This is a big development for this part of the South, especially considering Ossoff got a higher percentage of the vote than Clinton or Obama (see what I did there?), and did so with a much-lower-than-presidential turnout that simultaneously exceeded that of a midterm.

[Adam Griffin]

The last candidate was a nobody with no money. So it's not really relevant. The Presidential numbers are more relevant, especially if you're using the fact that Hillary did so much better than Obama in this district to double down on the rich sunbelt district strategy. For $30 million, you could have done better than normal in many races, rather than just 1 that you still lost.

You lack basic understanding of Southern politics. It doesn't matter if it's a "nobody" or a well-known commodity: a literal dildo (D) and a legacy candidate (D) are going to generally be right alongside one another with respect to their shares of the vote in an identical race. This is a very inelastic area.

Ultimately, there are several independent dynamics at work here - along with the infrastructure of the Ossoff campaign - that lead to a significant over-performance for a candidate not seeking the Presidency. This is a big development for this part of the South, especially considering Ossoff got a higher percentage of the vote than Clinton or Obama (see what I did there?), and did so with a much-lower-than-presidential turnout that simultaneously exceeded that of a midterm.

So spending $30 million to lose a race in very inelastic area was a good idea?

Once an inelastic area flips, it stays flipped. Happened in Virginia in '08, happened on what's now called The Left Coast in the late '80's and early '90's.

I'm not sure whether MI, PA and WI stay GOP. In congress, TX-23 has flipped back and forth several times the past few years.

Those areas are not inelastic by any means, at least when compared to the South. You can also have inelastic areas that are literally right at 50/50 that sway back and forth ever so much; it simply means that the difference in the two parties' vote shares there is smaller than the already-small amount by which the district or area can shift.