Any chance Dems could pull a Senate upset in Nebr or Mississippi in 2018?

[Figueira]

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



(51-49 senate victory from 2000)

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.

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

[Figueira]

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.

[Nyvin]

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



(51-49 senate victory from 2000)

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.

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.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

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).

Source on this?

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

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



(51-49 senate victory from 2000)

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.

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.

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.

[(Still) muted by Kalwejt until March 31]

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

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.

Sorry, but this is a straight-up dumb comment. I'm sure people said the same thing about MA when Romney left the Governor's office--remember January 2010? Or LA when Landrieu was defeated. Or that NH would never elect a Republican Governor.

Sure, at this point, it's likelier than not that a Republican will win those Senate seats, but we are two years away. We could have ten major scandals before then, for all we know (and quite frankly, I wouldn't at all be surprised, and I feel like most Americans wouldn't be either).

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

[Mr. Smith]

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.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

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.

[GlobeSoc]

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.

[gespb19]

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.

[Nichlemn]

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.

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.

[MT Treasurer]

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