Georgia: Nunn not going down without a fight

[JRP1994]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfmzzXOIzk4

Good to see a spirited response from Nunn.

[Lief 🗽]

Shades of Dole's 2008 "There is no God!" ad perhaps?

[DrScholl]

It could possibly have an effect like Godless if Nunn plays the response correctly. It seems very desperate to put out an ad linking your opponent to terrorists, so I'm not sure why Perdue felt the need to do this is if this race is supposed to be Safe R.

[IceSpear]

Pretty dumb strategy for Purdue. All he has to do is hold Nunn under 50% in November and he has this race in the bag. It seems awfully strange to run an ad like this and risk backlash unless his internals are showing results more like Landmark and less like Insider Advantage.

[Maxwell]

Shades of Dole's 2008 "There is no God!" ad perhaps?

Y'all should hope so

I don't doubt that Nunn will continue to try to be a thorn in the new GOP majority possibility. No matter what happens, I don't think she will though. She might've won against Kingston though.

[Lief 🗽]

Shades of Dole's 2008 "There is no God!" ad perhaps?

Y'all should hope so

Well yeah, the other obvious parallel is when Saxby beat a legless war hero by insinuating he was pals with Saddam, sooo it could go either way.

[eric82oslo]

Good. I like this new side of Michelle and I like Georgia news outlet's surprisingly objective reporting.

[Bacon King]

Yeah, I was honestly worrying about this race until David Perdue began spending an assload of money - in one of the country's most expensive media markets - to run an ad that falsely accuses a former Republican president's charity of literally supporting terrorism

Either Perdue's campaign team is blatantly incompetent or they're panicking due to some terrible internals

[Flake]

The ad btw. Pretty terrible.

[KCDem]

Good to see The Great Michelle kicking the pusillanimous David's heiny back to his peach orchard.

[The Other Castro]

Seems like Perdue might become the Braley of Georgia

[user12345]

The ad btw. Pretty terrible.

He looks really lost/confused at the end of the ad.

[Indy Texas]

The Bush family did not take this ad well. Neil Bush publicly criticized David Perdue and demanded he apologize, and while Poppy Bush had endorsed Perdue earlier this year, he is supposedly very offended/upset/hurt (and who could blame him?). I doubt he'd publicly retract his endorsement but alienating one of the heaviest hitting families in GOP politics probably isn't a good move for Perdue in the long term.

I love that the ad cites the Texas Department of Public Safety, because as we know they're the world's leading counterterrorism policy experts. (We can only assume they're the ones who told David Dewhurst about those Muslim prayer rugs disguised as soccer jerseys).

[KCDem]

Hopefully Perdue gets curb stomped.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Hopefully Perdue gets curb stomped.

Yeah, this should have national implications too. If a Democrat had done something this dumb, it would surely drag down their national numbers.

[eric82oslo]

Seems like Perdue might become the Braley of Georgia

Rather the Mark Begich no? Except that Begich' ad wasn't even half as offensive as the ad of Perdue.

[Adam Griffin]

It's out.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Man, I don't have much invested in these midterms, but I do hope she wins.

[SPC]

Right now, based on the assumption that the Libertarian usually takes ~3%, I would peg the odds of a runoff at ~55% (with an outright Nunn win at ~5%), although that could change if Perdue's momentum keeps up or if Nunn turns this race around.

Assuming that there is a runoff, I am not sure that Perdue would be the overwhelming favorite that everyone assumes. If this were a normal winner-take-all election, sans runoff, Nunn would probably have ~25% chance of getting a plurarity on Election Night. Our sample of post-November runoffs consists only of Louisiana 2002 (where incumbent Landrieu gained a net ~7 points over her Republican opponents) and Georgia 2008 (where Chambliss gained a net ~15 points over his Democratic opponnent, although about half of this improvement can probably be attributed to historic black turnout in 2008.) Thus, I think the evidence is too spotty to say a priori that a Republican will do better in a runoff than in a midterm election, especially when it is an open race.

The closest thing to incumbency will be control of the Senate, which will probably give a modest boost to whichever party has it after the Louisiana runoff. Assume that analysts are correct that Republicans have a ~60% chance at control (which is an underestimate in this case, since a 50-49 split would almost certainly favor Perdue). Now, using Bayesian reasoning, if there is a runoff, there is ~20/55=~35% chance Nunn won a plurarilty on Election Night. If having control of the upper chamber boosts the majority party's chances by ~15%, then there is ~30% chance that Nunn wins the runoff, which cumulatively becomes a ~20% chance of Senator Nunn. Thus, while Nunn is certainly in a weaker position than she would be in a winner-take-all state, I do not believe the chances of her winning are significantly diminished by the runoff system.

EDIT: The more interesting case is going to be that in Louisiana, where likely residual uncertainties in Kansas and Georgia will make control of the Senate even more ambigious, which I suspect will place a larger albatross over Landrieu's neck than Nunn's. Assuming that Louisiana and Georgia both end up in runoffs, Republicans would have to pick up fewer than four Senate seats on Election Night (a remote possibility, given the likelihood that at least one of Pryor, Begich, Braley, or Udall will tumble) for Landrieu's seniority to work to her advantage. I suppose theoretically Landrieu could replicate her 2002 victory by Republicans picking up the six requisite seats on Election Night, but if at least two of her colleagues fell to challengers, I find it unlikely that Landrieu would avoid the same fate.