2014 US Congressional Election Results

[smoltchanov]

Well, we got Maffei by 20 points. That was good enough for me, even if getting Slaughter as well would have been even better... I wonder if Maggie Brooks would have won in a midterm or if the under the radar nature of Assini's campaign was what helped him get so close to such a massive upset.

LOL, I'm fine with conservadems losing D+5 districts by 20 points. A real Democrat will win next time. I'm glad Slaughter survived.

Maffei is anything, but conservadem. Only absolute idiots and loonies may think so. He is a typical "moderate liberal". Bad campaigner and politician in general - yes, bit conservadem - no way. He wasn't Barrow or McIntyre or Matheson, even less - Larry McDonald. They REALLY were conservadems))))

[KCDem]

Well, we got Maffei by 20 points. That was good enough for me, even if getting Slaughter as well would have been even better... I wonder if Maggie Brooks would have won in a midterm or if the under the radar nature of Assini's campaign was what helped him get so close to such a massive upset.

LOL, I'm fine with conservadems losing D+5 districts by 20 points. A real Democrat will win next time. I'm glad Slaughter survived.

Maffei is anything, but conservadem. Only absolute idiots and loonies may think so. He is a typical "moderate liberal". Bad campaigner and politician in general - yes, bit conservadem - no way. He wasn't Barrow or McIntyre or Matheson, even less - Larry McDonald. They REALLY were conservadems))))

I think I'll take my idea on who is conservative and liberal from someone who doesn't have his views skewed by his government's absurdity.

[smoltchanov]

Well, we got Maffei by 20 points. That was good enough for me, even if getting Slaughter as well would have been even better... I wonder if Maggie Brooks would have won in a midterm or if the under the radar nature of Assini's campaign was what helped him get so close to such a massive upset.

LOL, I'm fine with conservadems losing D+5 districts by 20 points. A real Democrat will win next time. I'm glad Slaughter survived.

Maffei is anything, but conservadem. Only absolute idiots and loonies may think so. He is a typical "moderate liberal". Bad campaigner and politician in general - yes, bit conservadem - no way. He wasn't Barrow or McIntyre or Matheson, even less - Larry McDonald. They REALLY were conservadems))))

I think I'll take my idea on who is conservative and liberal from someone who doesn't have his views skewed by his government's absurdity.

And i reserve the right to comment these "your ideas" accordingly to my thinking..

[Vega]

Any new votes counted in CA or AZ-02?

[nclib]

My guess is the US house will be 246-248 R, 188-87 D.  It will either tie or break the post World War II numbers. 

This means 12-15 net pickups, with 3 for the Dems and 15-18 for the GOP.

Pick-ups

Dem

CA-31 (open)
FL-2 (Southerland)
NE-2 (Terry)

GOP

NV-4 (Horsford)
TX-23 (Gallego)
NH-1 (Shea-Porter)
ME-2 (open)
IA-1 (open)
UT-4 (open)
WV-3 (Rahall)
GA-12 (Barrow)
NC-7 (open)
IL-10 (Schneider)
IL-12 (Enyart)
NY-1 (Bishop)
NY-21 (open)
NY-24 (Maffei)
FL-26 (Garcia)

Where else am I missing? Which of these has the highest D-PVI?

[Maxwell]

My guess is the US house will be 246-248 R, 188-87 D.  It will either tie or break the post World War II numbers. 

This means 12-15 net pickups, with 3 for the Dems and 15-18 for the GOP.

Pick-ups

Dem

CA-31 (open)
FL-2 (Southerland)
NE-2 (Terry)

GOP

NV-4 (Horsford)
TX-23 (Gallego)
NH-1 (Shea-Porter)
ME-2 (open)
IA-1 (open)
UT-4 (open)
WV-3 (Rahall)
GA-12 (Barrow)
NC-7 (open)
IL-10 (Schneider)
IL-12 (Enyart)
NY-1 (Bishop)
NY-21 (open)
NY-24 (Maffei)
FL-26 (Garcia)

Where else am I missing? Which of these has the highest D-PVI?

Schneider is D+8. I don't think that is topped anywhere.

[Vega]

All of the House races are probably toss-ups in 2016 except for NC-07, GA-12, WV-03 and maybe UT-04.

[MalaspinaGold]

With 33,000 left to count in CA-07, Ose is up 530; I think Bera wins this.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article3727753.html

McSally's lead has dropped to 179 votes; unsure of how many are left to count. A judge also refused her move to stop counting some of the provisional ballots.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/McSally-lawyers-trying-to-block-some-ballots-5883510.php

[Vosem]

Another interesting juxtaposition: the seat the Republicans captured with the greatest margin is David Rouzer in NC-7. Next was Elise Stefanik in NY-21, which was also seen as a fairly good bet. Then came John Katko in NY-24, who was seen as a decided underdog nearly through the end of the contest.

[rbt48]

It is extremely frustrating how in all these close western US races, the final votes always seem to favor the Democrat.  Of course it is a given that provisional favor the D candidate; just the nature of the beast that is provisional voting.  But absentees is another phenomenon entirely.  The CA Democrats must have this process down to a much better game plan.

[Lief 🗽]

It is extremely frustrating how in all these close western US races, the final votes always seem to favor the Democrat.  Of course it is a given that provisional favor the D candidate; just the nature of the beast that is provisional voting.  But absentees is another phenomenon entirely.  The CA Democrats must have this process down to a much better game plan.

I think Democratic constituencies are just more likely to procrastinate (young people, poor people, etc.) and send in their ballots later, as opposed to Republican constituencies (old folks) who like to do things as early as possible.

[Linus Van Pelt]

It is extremely frustrating how in all these close western US races, the final votes always seem to favor the Democrat.  Of course it is a given that provisional favor the D candidate; just the nature of the beast that is provisional voting.  But absentees is another phenomenon entirely.  The CA Democrats must have this process down to a much better game plan.

These states allow you to vote by mail without a special reason (and in some cases only have vote by mail), so the mail votes aren't necessarily absentee in the conventional sense.

[rbt48]

It is extremely frustrating how in all these close western US races, the final votes always seem to favor the Democrat.  Of course it is a given that provisional favor the D candidate; just the nature of the beast that is provisional voting.  But absentees is another phenomenon entirely.  The CA Democrats must have this process down to a much better game plan.

These states allow you to vote by mail without a special reason (and in some cases only have vote by mail), so the mail votes aren't necessarily absentee in the conventional sense.

Yes, it is a distant day when nearly all votes were cast on election day and returns were generally final by the next morning.  The only absentees votes were from folks who were actually out of town, generally people of some means, more Republican than Democrat.  Think of how Nixon prevailed in California in 1960 based on absentee ballots.  Same for Deukmejian over Bradley in California in the 1982 governorship race.  Bradley actually received more votes on election day, but lost due to absentees.  No longer the case!

[smoltchanov]

By the way: The BlueDogs were nearly halved (-8/19) - as everytime...

Regretfully - yes. Their districts gradually become too difficult even for them. Left-wing loonies may rejoice:  now they have "real" representatives in these districts - ultra-right Republicans. These loonies make me laugh loudly: for them - the worse - the better! Everything for the sake of "purity" and "principles" (THEIR principles, of course).

[J. J.]

My guess is the US house will be 246-248 R, 188-87 D.  It will either tie or break the post World War II numbers. 

This means 12-15 net pickups, with 3 for the Dems and 15-18 for the GOP.

Pick-ups

Dem

CA-31 (open)
FL-2 (Southerland)
NE-2 (Terry)

GOP

NV-4 (Horsford)
TX-23 (Gallego)
NH-1 (Shea-Porter)
ME-2 (open)
IA-1 (open)
UT-4 (open)
WV-3 (Rahall)
GA-12 (Barrow)
NC-7 (open)
IL-10 (Schneider)
IL-12 (Enyart)
NY-1 (Bishop)
NY-21 (open)
NY-24 (Maffei)
FL-26 (Garcia)

Where else am I missing? Which of these has the highest D-PVI?

You forgot the two LA districts; they are both likely Democratic pickups; that takes it up to 246.  Then you AZ-4, CA-7, CA-16.  I think they will carry at least one of them, for 247

[Torie]

With 33,000 left to count in CA-07, Ose is up 530; I think Bera wins this.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article3727753.html

McSally's lead has dropped to 179 votes; unsure of how many are left to count. A judge also refused her move to stop counting some of the provisional ballots.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/McSally-lawyers-trying-to-block-some-ballots-5883510.php

As to AZ-02:

"McSally leads Barber by 179 votes with about 4,000 left to count in Pima County including write-ins. An automatic recount will be triggered if the two candidates end up separated by about 200 votes or less."

That means about 2,200 left to count in Pima in AZ-02.  That means Barber needs to get about a 54-46 split on the balance (a bit more if one deletes the write ins and over and under votes), to close the gap aside from all of the legal contretemps, and absent a recount changing the numbers much. I am fairly confident that has not been his margin in the late counted votes - absent something weird happening with the provisionals, which may be what this is all about.  

As to CA-07, it appears to me that Bera is on the pace to a lead by a tiny margin, very tiny. Close to two thirds of the remaining ballots have been counted outstanding in the CD since the prior vote dump (much of the County is not in the CD from looking at the votes remaining in the County) and Ose's lead dropped by just a bit more than two thirds. So the trend line change from the previous late vote dump would have to hold - as near steady as an expensive Swiss watch, to bag it for Bera.

[Tender Branson]

Update for Alaska:

* 34.884 absentee ballots left to count that have arrived so far (deadline to arrive is Nov. 19)
*   2.651 early votes
* 13.038 questioned ballots (typically consisting of votes cast at the wrong polling place)
* 10.512 absentee ballots sent to potential voters, but not yet returned as of Sunday night

Summary: 50.573 ballots will be counted for sure (not all of them will be valid of course) and a handful of the 10.512 could be counted as well, if returned by the deadline.

http://www.adn.com/article/20141110/more-50000-votes-remain-be-counted-heated-alaska-races

[jimrtex]

It is extremely frustrating how in all these close western US races, the final votes always seem to favor the Democrat.  Of course it is a given that provisional favor the D candidate; just the nature of the beast that is provisional voting.  But absentees is another phenomenon entirely.  The CA Democrats must have this process down to a much better game plan.

California and Arizona have permanent vote by mail, where a ballot is automatically sent to the voter each election.  Looking at Sacramento County, it appears around 62% of voters were by mail (Sacramento County reports each election precinct as two "precincts", one for in-person voters and one for mail ballots).  This would include some voters who requested a mail ballot for this election only, and voters in mail precincts (precincts with relatively few voters, where all voting is by mail to avoid the expense of operating a polling place on election day).

The following is mixing races, and jurisdictions and is dependent on me having written down some numbers, but it should be correct as far as flavor.

Based on the Ose-Bera race in CA-7, 72% of ballots were counted on election night.  So that would make it:

72% on election night.
   38% in-person.
   34% mail ballots.
28% since election night.
   28% mail ballots.

Note the in-person/mail distribution is based on Sacramento County, while the election night/since election night is based on CA-7.

The late-counted ballots in CA-7 have been 4.32% more favorable for Bera (48.63% election night, 52.95% late counted).

In the gubernatorial race, county-wide results by mail are 1.52% more favorable for Brown than for the election day votes 62.59% vs 61.07%.

Based on distribution of ballot types and confabulating the two races and the county and district, it would suggest that the early-counted mail ballots were slightly more favorable to Kashari than the election day votes (around 1%).

Throwing in another tidbit from another county (Butte), Republicans are slightly (3%) more likely than Democrats to be PVBM voters, and around 10% more likely than minor party, and No Party Preference (NPP) voters.

In California, mail ballots must be in the hands of election officials by election night to be counted.  So you have to mail a ballot back early enough, trust the USPS to only take a couple of days to deliver a ballot in a couple of days, walk your ballot to a polling place on election day, or take it to a drive-by collection location.

Republicans are a bit more likely to fill in their ballot and return it right away.  They might live where they can trust the mail to be picked up by the USPS, or have stamps available.  Democrats are more likely to stick their ballot below a stack of unpaid bills.

Signatures have to be verified.  Ballots that are returned before the election can be handled and set aside to be counted.  The crush on the last days can not.  On election day, the staff is going to be busy.  And the election officials are going to prefer to use regular staff, or hire temporary workers for a couple of weeks, rather than trying to hire and train workers for a day or two.  If there were a law that said that all the ballots had to be counted by Wednesday or Friday, they could probably do it.  But it easier to spread it out over time.

One thing that is bothersome in California is that the counties are independent on how they operate and even report things to the SOS.  So some counties don't even bother to report the number of uncounted ballots, or only do it every couple of days.  And counts are release in spurts.  It can really give the impression that counties are holding on to ballots (eg in CA-16 where Fresno released some updates, the Madera, the some more in Fresno, and then Merced.

[Sbane]

It is extremely frustrating how in all these close western US races, the final votes always seem to favor the Democrat.  Of course it is a given that provisional favor the D candidate; just the nature of the beast that is provisional voting.  But absentees is another phenomenon entirely.  The CA Democrats must have this process down to a much better game plan.

Since these are mostly permanent vote by mail voters, these people have a better turnout than Election Day voters due to the convenience of voting by mail. This means they more closely model a presidential election as opposed to a midterm election. Soft supporters of the democrats end up voting for them even during these waves whereas they might not have done so if they had to wait an hour in line.

[Sbane]

With 33,000 left to count in CA-07, Ose is up 530; I think Bera wins this.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article3727753.html

McSally's lead has dropped to 179 votes; unsure of how many are left to count. A judge also refused her move to stop counting some of the provisional ballots.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/McSally-lawyers-trying-to-block-some-ballots-5883510.php

As to AZ-02:

"McSally leads Barber by 179 votes with about 4,000 left to count in Pima County including write-ins. An automatic recount will be triggered if the two candidates end up separated by about 200 votes or less."

That means about 2,200 left to count in Pima in AZ-02.  That means Barber needs to get about a 54-46 split on the balance (a bit more if one deletes the write ins and over and under votes), to close the gap aside from all of the legal contretemps, and absent a recount changing the numbers much. I am fairly confident that has not been his margin in the late counted votes - absent something weird happening with the provisionals, which may be what this is all about. 

As to CA-07, it appears to me that Bera is on the pace to a lead by a tiny margin, very tiny. Close to two thirds of the remaining ballots have been counted outstanding in the CD since the prior vote dump (much of the County is not in the CD from looking at the votes remaining in the County) and Ose's lead dropped by just a bit more than two thirds. So the trend line change from the previous late vote dump would have to hold - as near steady as an expensive Swiss watch, to bag it for Bera.

What number of outstanding ballots are you assuming is in CD-7? Remember, this is basically half of the county by population and certainly casted more votes than CD-6 in this election. The other districts in Sacramento barely have any people in it. It might not be a bad assumption that of the 33,000 ballots left to county in the entire county, more than half would be in CD-7. Even if you are conservative, and say that only 15,000 are left in CD-7 (assuming the late voters are disproportionately poor democrats voting in CD-6), you still only need about a 52-48 Bera lead on the remaining ballots for him to win. Not easy to do, but it is certainly doable. And any recount should help Bera, IMHO.

[Torie]

With 33,000 left to count in CA-07, Ose is up 530; I think Bera wins this.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article3727753.html

McSally's lead has dropped to 179 votes; unsure of how many are left to count. A judge also refused her move to stop counting some of the provisional ballots.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/McSally-lawyers-trying-to-block-some-ballots-5883510.php

As to AZ-02:

"McSally leads Barber by 179 votes with about 4,000 left to count in Pima County including write-ins. An automatic recount will be triggered if the two candidates end up separated by about 200 votes or less."

That means about 2,200 left to count in Pima in AZ-02.  That means Barber needs to get about a 54-46 split on the balance (a bit more if one deletes the write ins and over and under votes), to close the gap aside from all of the legal contretemps, and absent a recount changing the numbers much. I am fairly confident that has not been his margin in the late counted votes - absent something weird happening with the provisionals, which may be what this is all about. 

As to CA-07, it appears to me that Bera is on the pace to a lead by a tiny margin, very tiny. Close to two thirds of the remaining ballots have been counted outstanding in the CD since the prior vote dump (much of the County is not in the CD from looking at the votes remaining in the County) and Ose's lead dropped by just a bit more than two thirds. So the trend line change from the previous late vote dump would have to hold - as near steady as an expensive Swiss watch, to bag it for Bera.

What number of outstanding ballots are you assuming is in CD-7? Remember, this is basically half of the county by population and certainly casted more votes than CD-6 in this election. The other districts in Sacramento barely have any people in it. It might not be a bad assumption that of the 33,000 ballots left to county in the entire county, more than half would be in CD-7. Even if you are conservative, and say that only 15,000 are left in CD-7 (assuming the late voters are disproportionately poor democrats voting in CD-6), you still only need about a 52-48 Bera lead on the remaining ballots for him to win. Not easy to do, but it is certainly doable. And any recount should help Bera, IMHO.

Before the last vote dump, Bera needed about a 53-47 split to win. Now he needs about a 51.5-48.5 split to win (CA-07 has abut 55% of the Sacto County pie). So yes, if the trend holds, Bera should win by about 500 votes or something. The last vote dump was  about 53.4 to 46.6 split in favor of Bera - which if it holds for the balance of the votes, would give Bera about a 500 vote victory. Those tenths of percent changes in the trend line make all the difference. Now, the last vote dumps need to move a couple of percent in the Pub direction as you note.

[Senator Cris]

News from Alaska?

[Tender Branson]

News from Alaska?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=201724.msg4377462#msg4377462

Counting will start today for the remaining early votes and the absentee ballots that were already received.

The remaining absentees will be counted in a week, together with the questioned ballots.

[cinyc]

News from Alaska?

According to Alaska Public Radio, they just started counting in some places at 1pm Eastern. They're not starting counting in Anchorage until 5pm Eastern.  It will take a while. They are counting the areas with no election night absentees reported first.  And they're probably not going to get through all the absentees today.

[memphis]

Looks like we lost all the most Republican leaning districts. UT-4 (R+16), WV-3 (R+14) NC-7 (R+12) and GA-12 (R+9) The most Republican seat the Dems hold is now MN-7 which is R+6. I'll skip passing a value judgement on that, but it makes sense. Why would Republican voters vote for a Democrat or vice versa?