2018: DOAs and Retirements

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I said in another board, I would not be surprised if Hillary won with a Republican Senate majority, and even a rather secure one like 53 or 54 seats.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I said in another board, I would not be surprised if Hillary won with a Republican Senate majority, and even a rather secure one like 53 or 54 seats.

That's extremely unlikely. The same factors working against red state Democrats (increased polarization, decrease in split ticket voting) will also work against blue state Republicans. If Republicans break even in the Senate, Hillary almost certainly lost. You can make the argument that the Republican incumbents are unnaturally strong in 2016 (I don't see the logic behind it since most of them haven't been tested statewide outside of a low turnout Republican wave, but I digress), but people were saying the exact same thing about Pryor and Landrieu in 2013/2014. How did that turn out again?

It is more a indictment against the type of coalition Hillary would put together. Indies, women, plus some old conserva dems and of course boatloads of former Republicans in suburbs. Professional Republicans, willing to work accross the aisle threaten much more ticket splitting then was possible with Obama's coalition. I can easily see Toomey and Clinton both winning Bucks county at the same time and same goes for Kirk in Lake County.

If anything Landrieu and Pryor serve to prove my point. Suppose Hillary improves in both those states for instance, does anyone think that it would translate down ballot? The reason for this is because also that Clinton if the election were today, has a persona that is popular beyond her Party and therefore, she will outrun her own Party. That means the swing votes decide the game and they are just as finicky as ever. A good but more extreme example is Cuomo who had appeal beyond his Party, though unlike Cuomo she is not hated within it. Also, save for ILL, none of those states are direct comparisons to Republicans winning in close Presidential states.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I said in another board, I would not be surprised if Hillary won with a Republican Senate majority, and even a rather secure one like 53 or 54 seats.

That's extremely unlikely. The same factors working against red state Democrats (increased polarization, decrease in split ticket voting) will also work against blue state Republicans. If Republicans break even in the Senate, Hillary almost certainly lost. You can make the argument that the Republican incumbents are unnaturally strong in 2016 (I don't see the logic behind it since most of them haven't been tested statewide outside of a low turnout Republican wave, but I digress), but people were saying the exact same thing about Pryor and Landrieu in 2013/2014. How did that turn out again?

That's not really the case unlike 2014. Only Kirk's state is blue, I guess Johnson, Ayotte and Toomey have a blue tinge but they wouldn't be really defying partisan gravity to win. Rest are either genuine swing states, or worse.

And when you go state by state, the places where she stands the make the gains are amongst people who have a deep distrust of Democratic party they feel has abandoned them and will certainly vote Republican for Senate or House to check Hillary's excesses, or are former Republicans who long for the days of productive, sane Republicans. And save for Johnson, it is hard to argue that the other Republicans have not served as just that.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I said in another board, I would not be surprised if Hillary won with a Republican Senate majority, and even a rather secure one like 53 or 54 seats.

That's extremely unlikely. The same factors working against red state Democrats (increased polarization, decrease in split ticket voting) will also work against blue state Republicans. If Republicans break even in the Senate, Hillary almost certainly lost. You can make the argument that the Republican incumbents are unnaturally strong in 2016 (I don't see the logic behind it since most of them haven't been tested statewide outside of a low turnout Republican wave, but I digress), but people were saying the exact same thing about Pryor and Landrieu in 2013/2014. How did that turn out again?

It is more a indictment against the type of coalition Hillary would put together. Indies, women, plus some old conserva dems and of course boatloads of former Republicans in suburbs. Professional Republicans, willing to work accross the aisle threaten much more ticket splitting then was possible with Obama's coalition. I can easily see Toomey and Clinton both winning Bucks county at the same time and same goes for Kirk in Lake County.

If anything Landrieu and Pryor serve to prove my point. Suppose Hillary improves in both those states for instance, does anyone think that it would translate down ballot? The reason for this is because also that Clinton if the election were today, has a persona that is popular beyond her Party and therefore, she will outrun her own Party. That means the swing votes decide the game and they are just as finicky as ever. A good but more extreme example is Cuomo who had appeal beyond his Party, though unlike Cuomo she is not hated within it. Also, save for ILL, none of those states are direct comparisons to Republicans winning in close Presidential states.

I could easily see Toomey and Hillary winning Bucks County as well (in fact, I'd argue it's the most probable scenario), same for Hillary and Kirk carrying Lake. But Dems don't need those counties to win statewide. Bucks is no longer the bellwether it was back in 2000/2004. In 2008 it was 3 points more Republican than the state as a whole, in 2012 it was 4 points more Republican. In the 2010 Senate race it was 4 points more Republican, and in the 2014 gubernatorial race it was a whopping 6 points more Republican (though Cawley may have had an impact on that). Granted, a Democrat who is winning a relatively comfortable (~5 points) victory statewide will carry Bucks, but I don't expect that for Sestak. I expect it to be an extremely narrow race in either direction, which would mean Toomey carries it regardless. As for Illinois, Quinn won in 2010, a midterm with lower turnout than 2016 will have, despite losing Lake by a hefty margin. Carrying it would be essential to Blanche Kirk, but not to defeat him.

Pryor was also supposed to have a personal brand that would get him to significantly outperform a generic D. Instead he got Blanched. Obviously there's some exceptions to the polarization (such as Collins and Manchin), but I'm not convinced that Republicans are exempt from it in a year when there's a strong Democrat at the top of the ticket. The fact that Republicans couldn't carry a single Obama state Senate seat in either 2008 or 2012 with the sole exception of Collins, seems to back up this assertion.

You miss the point. Counties don't decide elections, tracts of voters do. The type of voters who will split Hillary/Toomey in Bucks are also in Chester. Say Hillary loses Chester by a couple of points, but Toomey wins it by like 10%, very plausible, maybe even probably. Suppose then that Hillary wins Montco by 12% to 15%, but Toomey only loses by a single digit margin. It is also fairly probable that Toomey outruns the ticket in the Lehigh Valley.