Talk Elections

I know Nevada is in play in 2018... And arguably an outside shot at Cruz in Texas ...

But what about Mississippi or Nebraska?  Would a top notch Dem candidate have a shot at either?

The best statewide Dem in MS is Jim Hood, the incumbent Attorney General.  He's a conservative Demosaur who's been serving since 2004.

But he wouldn't be able to defeat Wicker unless the Senator was indicated in some sort of major scandal. 

No. Democrats aren't going to win back the Senate in 2018.

There's a "Jim Carrey" chance, but not a realistic one.

If Roger Wicker is caught murdering a small child, then Democrats might make it close.

Defeat Flake and Heller, while keeping all the other Senate seats. But unless it's in a recession, no reason for it to happen.

Democrats put up the best candidate they had in Nebraska in an open seat in a good year for them and still lost by 15, so no there (though it seems like the DSCC may be targeting it).

I actually think Ds winning a deep red state like UT in an upset is more likely to happen than them holding all their other seats. Both are very, very unlikely, though.

-Incumbency has stopped being an advantage to Senate candidates? Or is it just not as big as it used to be?

Incumbency doesn't matter if your state has decided that it just can't vote for your party anymore. MO will almost certainly never vote for a statewide democrat again, and its likelier than not that the same is true of Indiana.

Nope. God has told me that Democrats will not retake the US Senate in 2018.

However, Democrats could have a plausible chance to take the Utah Senate Seat in 2018. Ben McAdams would be a strong candidate for that seat. However a few things must happen.

1) Trump must remain unpopular with Mormons.
2) Ben McAdams or even Jim Matheson would have to run
3) Probably there will have to be some sort of conservative split vote.

Matheson has shown little interest in pursuing statewide office with his career moves. From what I understand he does have a large campaign chest. If Matheson or McAdams could win a Senate Seat in 2018 in Utah they would likely be Mark Begich 2.0. One term Senator and could well come close to retaining in 2014 but falling barely short.

If McAdams [or perhaps Matheson] is smart they would wait for the open 2020 Gubernatorial Contest. It is way to early to tell but either one would have an good shot to win the open seat.


lmao. Who knows. At least MO Democrats lost power with an a Republican administration coming in. I do not think Kander's campaign was great. Yes extremely controversial position I know but I think it did show there is a pathway for a Democrat to win statewide in the state. It could well happen in 2018. Though it may take into the 2020s to recover.

The dynamics are interesting. Midwestern states have often insane swings up and down the ballot and Southern States with stagnant demographics have going hard Republican. MO is a bit of both.

Wulfric is one of those 2016 forever people. There has always been a cult on Atlas that bases EVERY future election result from Presidential vote to City Council district solely on the last general result until the end of time.

We'd be more likely to see a flip in Tennessee

That would have to happen within 10 days of the election. Otherwise, he would be replaced on the ballot by the first stray dog to pass by the state Republican office: and the said dog would win.

nah. Wicker is won't be beat, and even though Deb Fischer isn't the strongest red state incumbent, she's in a state with a very minimal Democratic party.

Notably in eastern Nebraska. So I think that if Nebraska is in play in 2018, eastern Nebraska would be the local statewide battleground.

Nonsense.   You literally have no base for this.

This is the sort of map the democrats have to pull off to win NE:

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(51-49 senate victory from 2000)

In the sense that anything can happen in politics, sure. But the most likely path to the Senate goes through NV, AZ, and TX. Which still has only about a 5% chance of happening.

Democrats may not be able to win Texas, but Cruz could lose in a primary. Maybe his support to John Roberts (a proponent of Obamacare) could doom him.

Similarily to Rick Santorum when he lost credibility during the 2012 GOP primaries due to his support to moderate pro-choice Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in 2004 while six years later, Specter voted for Obamacare.

"Don't look at me, take a look at the mirror" - Mitt Romney adressing to Santorum during the Arizona Republican debate in 2012.

I HATE those people, LOL.  They're such political nerds - and annoyingly young - that they want to talk, talk and talk some more about the *current coalitions* and *PVI* and other things that demand a lot more nuance than they ever give them.

I doubt the map would look like that nowadays. Sarpy County would vote Democratic, and I think a lot of those rural counties would vote Republican.

In order to win Nebraska, Democrats would have to win some rural counties. Not enough urban vote in the state to do it on urban areas alone.

Yea. I mean trends, pvi, demographics DO make a difference but not as much as you would think. And I think that matters the most on the presidential level. A little less on the Senate level and a lot less on the Gubernatorial level and below.

Like I think we could see for some time that Ohio and Iowa could well vote Republican for President but I would think either of those states could elect or re-elect a Democratic Senator or Governor. Georgia will likely go Democratic in the next Democratic electoral college victory but Republicans will likely hold the state legislature for a while. If you believe exit polls, the incumbent Republican Senator got a respectable amount of the black vote in Georgia. Michigan and Pennsylvania are not part of a so-called blue wall but they may lean a bit Democratic in the future. Still very contestable states though.

Also since I have been political aware I have seen a lot of changes. From the 2004 election of Bush which people assumed we could only win with a Warner-Bayh ticket in 2008. Democrats won with Obama in 2008 and probably would have won with Sanders in 2016. That does not mean we should have a Sanders type candidate in 2020. That would be especially true if Trump's anti free trade stance throws us into a recession.

NEVER is an awfully strong word - I think a lot of us would've said "no Democrat was ever going to win statewide again" about Louisiana as late as September 2015.

Some rural counties, certainly, but probably not all of the ones on the map.

With a universal swing from 2016, Democrats can actually win Nebrsska with only six counties: Douglas, Sarpy, Lancaster, Saline, Thurston, and Dakota. That said, universal swings don't exist so I'm not sure if that's actually the most likely winning map.

Actually Douglas, Lancaster, and Sarpy counties together make up ~53% of the state's population.

It's that the western part of the state votes SOOO Republican and the eastern urban areas just have small Dem leans that makes Nebraska so hard for Democrats to win statewide.

Source on this?

I imagine that number is total population, not VEP. And even if it's the latter, it would only work if it voted >80% dem with sky high turnout, unless the rural margins were much smaller than usual, but in that case you would expect a few rural counties to vote dem, so it's not as if the map would be just those three counties in all likelihood.

-Partisanship works very differently in gubernatorial races than it does in Senate races.

Not in Ole Miss by any chance, even with Hood or Travers.

Nebraska...that'd take Trump really going underwater, like where Dubya was at the end. There'd also have to be a sort of Colorado '14 situation on top of that.

I am looking forward to these 2018 midterms, that could turn out better than expected for the Dems; Chris Kennedy looking to run in IL and Gwen Graham looking to run for FL open seat. And Flake on the verge of losing.

Nebraska is possible if there is Urban poll spamming and large swings in rural areas to democrats. So, given a horrific Trump and the Republican being a very bad campaigner or scandal-ridden, a potential target.

Mississippi is much less likely and would require some massive external factors going awry all at once for the Republicans. If that flips, we're looking at an existential threat to the Republican party and Class 1 is almost or completely unanimously democrat+independent. The house would have triple digit gains for the democrats and the Democrats have enough state trifectas to call for a constitutional convention. Basically, the dems will have won the game known as the US political system.

Apparently Chris McDaniel might run in 2018. So if he can somehow knock off Wicker and the Dems run Presley, then there's a non-zero chance.

Tell me about it. See also: the people that think every "political trend" between two data points will continue unabated until the end of time.

Lol, Deb Fischer and Roger Wicker aren't going to lose. It's about as likely as Elizabeth Warren losing reelection.