GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[Sorenroy]

http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/georgia-house-special-election-district-6

So this is all early?

[Sorenroy]

Is there any network doing live news coverage I can watch? Don't get me wrong, I love following what you guys have to say, but I need to go hands free for a while.

[Sorenroy]

Come on, Fulton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTyN-vvFIkE

At this rate I'm going to have to watch that whole thing.

[Sorenroy]

Let's check how the polls did (I'm assuming Ossoff ends up at 48%)

Emerson had Ossoff at 43% (+5)
Landmark had Ossoff at 45% (+3)
Fox 5 had Ossoff at 42% (+6)
Zpolitics had Ossoff at 41% (+7)

It says a lot about how awful Zogby is that even the mention of the letter Z gives me the shivers.

[Sorenroy]

So for people saying Ossoff loses support in the runoff, are you saying some of his voters will switch to Handel or that his voters won't all turn up whereas Republicans will have more consistent turnout and all vote for her?

he probably won't lose support, and I am undecided if his turnout rate will decrease, though I doubt it will increase, but I think Handel will form a GOP coalition that will have a high turnout and smack Ossoff silly. Handel is fairly moderate and regular old school party centric GOP member, which works well in suburban areas, and she is a strong female figure that could help garner and turnout moderate/very center barely right, middle aged suburban house wives. She is the perfect candidate for the district, and has already gotten the support from some of her defeated GOP opponents. She will stitch together a coalition, and they will turn out big on election day in june, especially after seeing how close Ossoff did. I don't see Ossoff turning out anymore, since I feel like his enthusiasm cap has reached its limit, and is fizzling down. He blew his chance tonight, while Handel over-performed.

So, let's make one thing clear. While Ossoff might lose to Handel in the second round, it will not be because of lower turnout. Ossoff comes into the second round having already gotten 48.10% of the vote. While it is conceivable that some of this support may fade in the next two months, I highly doubt that that loss will be significant. Mixed with the fact that the other scattered Democrats got 0.88% of the vote, I am fairly certain that Ossoff will not see a decline in the raw number between the two rounds of the election. On the other hand, Handel is coming into round two with only 19.78%. While Republicans combined did win a total of 51.02%, it is a steep assumption to say that Handel will win all of those votes.

So, your assumption is that Handel will win, but turnout will not go up. In order to make up the 54,397 vote, or 28.32%, gap without increased turnout, Handel will need to unite 90.66% of the scattered Republican vote (88.16% of all the scattered votes) in order to win. That's not impossible, but that assumes 0% of the scattered Democratic, Independent, and Republican vote goes to Ossoff.

[Sorenroy]

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/06/georgia-special-election-spending-record-238054?cmpid=sf GA-6 race now the most expensive race in US House history (I assume this is by individual seat)

I cannot describe how frustrating it is to contact these people (Ossoff). I signed up to volenteer two or three days ago and have only gotten donation prompts. I decided to call them today and their phone number just directs you to check their website which then directs you to email them. I really wanted to do some phonebanking today ('cause I'm stuck in the house), but I sent out an email three hours ago and haven't even gotten a "we received your message" response.

For the most expensive race in the US House history, I would expect them to have at least one person working on the phone lines to take questions.

[Sorenroy]

I saw this on DK today, and I have to ask, who exactly is putting together these emails for Ossoff?



Is trying to digitally guilt someone really the best way to solicit money?

I saw that too and thought maybe it was targeted at people who were on their list but hadn't donated. It especially grinds me the wrong way because they are literally the best funded House race ever. The money is coming from somewhere, don't bother me with this begging trash.

[Sorenroy]

I meant to post about this a week or two ago, but I had heard through someone in the state party that Ossoff's campaign basically stopped phone banking (and/or canvassing possibly) for some period of time because they have totally saturated the district, contacted every voter by phone and door multiple times and were starting to piss off rather large numbers of people. Not sure how reliable/true that is but I wouldn't think the person would've just made it up.

Can confirm. They just restarted out of district phone banking this Friday.

[Sorenroy]

it's so silly that we still have different runoff rules for state and federal races

What are the differences?

[Sorenroy]

Fulton County Department of Elections is suddenly changing voting locations for a dozen precincts in advance of the June 20 run-off. When asked why, their answer was "unforeseen circumstances".

You must be logged in to read this quote.

For the record, the April 18 partisan breakdown of these combined precincts was 55.3% GOP, 44.7% Dem.

Freedom Fighters!

Voter suppression is voter suppression. The only solace is that the good guys aren't victims for once...and its still very wrong.

There is no solace in less people voting, especially in an off year election where there are less voters anyway. They're picking someone to represent them for like a year and a half, not just a change in the shade of red or blue on a map of house districts.

Also, they've known about this election for a while. (1) Why would the locations have "scheduled events" on election day when they knew when the election was and (2) why would they only announce the changes now. It's not like the first round was yesterday; it was five weeks ago. How were these changes "unforeseen" (unless this is only being done to suppress voter turnout).

[Sorenroy]

^^^ Nah, this is part of the broader reason why our side is inherently inferior and continues to lose. Realize what world you're living in and abandon the idealism.

I would rather be in the minority party that doesn't accept voter suppression as an a-ok form of winning then whatever pseudo-democratic Democratic party you support.

[Sorenroy]

^^^ Nah, this is part of the broader reason why our side is inherently inferior and continues to lose. Realize what world you're living in and abandon the idealism.

I would rather be in the minority party that doesn't accept voter suppression as an a-ok form of winning then whatever pseudo-democratic Democratic party you support.

Maybe you can afford to have that hoity-toity moral luxury. Many of us cannot. One side tends to think like you and the other side gets to govern.

The system is fundamentally unfair as-is and slanted in favor of the GOP in a number of ways that give that minority bloc majority influence. If you actually support democracy that is representative, then you'll support whatever it takes to rat-f[inks]k the s[inks]t out of them, eliminate those unfair advantages and put the actual majority party in this country back in the majority again.

So what you are saying is that, because the system is unfair, Democrats, when they are able to claw back power from the Republicans, should gerrymander as hard as possible to make up for the flaws in the system? If that's not what you are saying and I'm reading you wrong, then please correct me, but that appears to be what you are arguing.

First off, nothing can happen unless Democrats win. If they cannot, we will perpetually live in a world governed by Republicans. The argument of Democrats gerrymandering or not does not matter if Democrats are never in a position to do so. My argument is this: gerrymandering, no matter which side does it, is bad. As such, if we do continue to win by 15 point margins through 2020 and are in positions of power after the next census, I would hope that Democrats would not try to turn around and screw the Republicans out of as many seats as humanly possible.

That is not to say that I do not recognize and agree with the fact that there are issues in our current system. For example, even if Democrats do not gerrymander, there is nothing from stopping the Republicans from screwing us back over in 2030 if they control the states. What I would propose to you is that, rather than further the partisanship in this country, we as Democrats redo the laws when we gain power so that Republicans are not able to gerrymander in the first place. Rather than hope that the Republicans will pay us back in kind, I am saying that we should make it so that they have to, no matter if they want to or not.

For starters, we don't have to just ignore the issue. Democrats can work to make it law that there is a non-partisan board, or whatever other acceptable un-political group/computer program/something else, that draws the lines for the districts.

As for issues such as the natural spreadoutedness of Republicans, making our elections more representative of the votes cast would be a good (albeit long term) solution to the problem.

[Sorenroy]

GOP Super PAC ad ties Ossoff to Kathy Griffin

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/06/01/gop-super-pac-tries-to-tie-georgia-democrat-to-kathy-griffin/?utm_term=.ac48f28197e5

I had a bit of a chuckle at the idea that Michael Moore is the face of "dividing America" in 2017. That's rich.

[Sorenroy]

By the way, this thread is fast approaching 2,500 posts. Will it be locked at some point, or are we going to try to see this election through on one thread?