GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[ApatheticAustrian]

Agreed, Tom and sorry for misunderstanding your point.

it is ofc a simple truth, that trump could never ever win against all cities/urban places - the rural margins just were unseen and made all takes center about rural suffering and accepting rural cultur and bla.

even while i have to say, IL is a rather bad ecample....after all there aren't many states who are more rural and TRENDED dem in 2016. 

[The Other Castro]

Ossoff just challenged Handel to six debates before the runoff.

[Hindsight was 2020]

New article out on Ossoff vs Handel with some interesting tibits:
1) Ossoff is now having his field team starting to focus on winning indies and GOPers who don't like Handel 
2) Handel has raised about 1 million dollars since the runoff was announced but unlike Ossoff she has to use more of that to build up her staff due to it being smaller because of the split field while Ossoff has a much bigger staff/team already in place
http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/ossoff-campaign-efforts-runoff

[Brittain33]

Ossoff just challenged Handel to six debates before the runoff.

Huh. I have to suppress my reaction that this is what likely losers do and just take it at face value.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Ossoff just challenged Handel to six debates before the runoff.

Huh. I have to suppress my reaction that this is what likely losers do and just take it at face value.

It will be interesting to see how Ossoff performs in a debate.  He comes across well in his ads, but having to respond in real time is very different.  My impression of Handel from past debates is that she didn't leave much of an impression; her performance was neither great nor horrible.

[ReaganLimbaugh]

More bad news for Ossoff

http://politics.blog.myajc.com/2017/04/24/karen-handel-raises-nearly-1-million-a-week-into-georgia-6th-runoff/

[Hindsight was 2020]

More bad news for Ossoff

http://politics.blog.myajc.com/2017/04/24/karen-handel-raises-nearly-1-million-a-week-into-georgia-6th-runoff/

I covered that earlier an it really isn't seeing as Ossoff has like 6 mil in his war chest from the primary

[Skill and Chance]

People REALLY overrate how many rural voters there are, period.

yeah, rural voters need to vote in spectacular high numbers and for one single candidate to make a difference.

that was "strange" about 2016 - would be hard to repeat.

But my point is that most Trump voters WEREN'T rural.  Just using Illinois, a state that Trump lost by a bad margin, he got 2,146,015 votes.  Of those 2,146,015, 72.67% came from counties that are part of metro areas of 150,000 or bigger:

1,041,346 in Chicagoland
67,906 from the Rockford metro area
58,405 from the Illinois side of the Quad Cities metro area
93,110 from the Peoria metro area
42,314 from the Bloomington-Normal metro area
43,482 from the Champaign-Urbana metro area
54,175 from the Springfield metro area
158,857 from the Metro East (Illinois suburbs of St. Louis)

He won all of those metro areas except for Chicagoland and Champaign.  He also won every single county not included in those metros except for Jackson County in Southern Illinois (Clinton won 11,634 to Trump's 10,843).  What's my point?  Just because Trump won rural counties in Illinois by massive margins DOESN'T MEAN HIS SUPPORTERS WERE RURAL.  As I just demonstrated, the vast majority of his votes came from those metro areas, which don't even include CLEARLY not rural places like Galena (which Trump won), Decatur (which Trump won), Carbondale (which Trump won), etc.

The vast majority of Republican voters are not rural people.  For every rural Republican voter, there are two that live in a much more populated area that just happens to have more Democrats in it.

EDIT: And, doing simple math from the exit polls, only 22.57% of Trump voters lived in rural communities, compared to 52.26% living in suburbs and 25.16% living in urban areas.  So again, let that sink in, there were more Trump voters living in cities than in rural areas.  It doesn't matter that he won a vast majority of rural counties, they just simply didn't provide the bulk of his support, and that's a fact.

I think that a 150,000 person metro area is going to be culturally rural to someone who lives in a 1M+ metro area.  When people here say "city", they are usually thinking of those 1M+ metros.  And the Trump/Clinton divide really does look like 1M+ metros vs. everyone else!  The census view of urban is too broad to reflect the current cultural divide in the country IMO.

[Gass3268]

More bad news for Ossoff

http://politics.blog.myajc.com/2017/04/24/karen-handel-raises-nearly-1-million-a-week-into-georgia-6th-runoff/

Lol, Ossoff raised half that amount in less than 24 hours last week.

[GeorgiaModerate]

FWIW, I haven't heard any Handel radio ads since the primary, but Ossoff's have continued without a break (the same as before, I haven't heard any new ones yet).

[Tintrlvr]

FWIW, I haven't heard any Handel radio ads since the primary, but Ossoff's have continued without a break (the same as before, I haven't heard any new ones yet).

Presumably this is because Ossoff knew he would either win outright (and not need the rest of the money in his campaign coffers so not care as much about reserving time being a waste) or be in a runoff, so reserving time after the primary made sense. Whereas Handel was not certain to make the runoff and would have been wasting money and potentially going into debt if she reserved time for post-runoff and then didn't make the runoff. So not entirely a matter of money/organization.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Any idea that Jon Ossoff is basically the pinnacle of hope for all red state Dems in 2018? Kind of like how Scott Brown was for blue state Republicans in 2010?

Not at all.  There are quite a few bluer districts than GA-6 that are currently held by Republicans.

There were a lot of Senate seats up for reelection in 2010 that were D-held and redder than Massachusetts. Doesn't mean the Republicans won them.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Any idea that Jon Ossoff is basically the pinnacle of hope for all red state Dems in 2018? Kind of like how Scott Brown was for blue state Republicans in 2010?

Not at all.  There are quite a few bluer districts than GA-6 that are currently held by Republicans.

There were a lot of Senate seats up for reelection in 2010 that were D-held and redder than Massachusetts. Doesn't mean the Republicans won them.

I don't get your point.  Certainly they didn't win all of them, but they did flip six seats that year; four open seats (IL, IN, ND, PA) and two where they defeated D incumbents (AR/Lincoln and WI/Feingold) -- all without losing any R-held seats.   That was clearly a great year for the GOP.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Any idea that Jon Ossoff is basically the pinnacle of hope for all red state Dems in 2018? Kind of like how Scott Brown was for blue state Republicans in 2010?

Not at all.  There are quite a few bluer districts than GA-6 that are currently held by Republicans.

There were a lot of Senate seats up for reelection in 2010 that were D-held and redder than Massachusetts. Doesn't mean the Republicans won them.

I don't get your point.  Certainly they didn't win all of them, but they did flip six seats that year; four open seats (IL, IN, ND, PA) and two where they defeated D incumbents (AR/Lincoln and WI/Feingold) -- all without losing any R-held seats.   That was clearly a great year for the GOP.

Yeah, but I'm just saying you should be cautious in trying to extrapolate the Georgia 6 results as simplistically as saying that since Dems got X% in GA-6, they'd get X+10% in some other district that voted 10% more Democratic than GA-6 in 2016. The 2018 election is over a year and a half away, and a lot of things can happen by then. That's all I'm saying.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Any idea that Jon Ossoff is basically the pinnacle of hope for all red state Dems in 2018? Kind of like how Scott Brown was for blue state Republicans in 2010?

Not at all.  There are quite a few bluer districts than GA-6 that are currently held by Republicans.

There were a lot of Senate seats up for reelection in 2010 that were D-held and redder than Massachusetts. Doesn't mean the Republicans won them.

I don't get your point.  Certainly they didn't win all of them, but they did flip six seats that year; four open seats (IL, IN, ND, PA) and two where they defeated D incumbents (AR/Lincoln and WI/Feingold) -- all without losing any R-held seats.   That was clearly a great year for the GOP.

Yeah, but I'm just saying you should be cautious in trying to extrapolate the Georgia 6 results as simplistically as saying that since Dems got X% in GA-6, they'd get X+10% in some other district that voted 10% more Democratic than GA-6 in 2016. The 2018 election is over a year and a half away, and a lot of things can happen by then. That's all I'm saying.

Oh, I completely agree with you there.  My point was just that there are a number of seats that, at least on paper, should be better D targets than GA-6.

[Ridge]

Someone pointed out that part of Ossoff's appeal is that he spent the 1st round of voting running very conservative-sounding advertisements on Atlanta television networks. Now that he has been outed as a far-left type, though, I think that some of his first round element will have to be replaced by actual lefties from the redistricting in order for a win.

[Brittain33]

Now that he has been outed as a far-left type, though

Welcome to Atlas!

[RINO Tom]

People REALLY overrate how many rural voters there are, period.

yeah, rural voters need to vote in spectacular high numbers and for one single candidate to make a difference.

that was "strange" about 2016 - would be hard to repeat.

But my point is that most Trump voters WEREN'T rural.  Just using Illinois, a state that Trump lost by a bad margin, he got 2,146,015 votes.  Of those 2,146,015, 72.67% came from counties that are part of metro areas of 150,000 or bigger:

1,041,346 in Chicagoland
67,906 from the Rockford metro area
58,405 from the Illinois side of the Quad Cities metro area
93,110 from the Peoria metro area
42,314 from the Bloomington-Normal metro area
43,482 from the Champaign-Urbana metro area
54,175 from the Springfield metro area
158,857 from the Metro East (Illinois suburbs of St. Louis)

He won all of those metro areas except for Chicagoland and Champaign.  He also won every single county not included in those metros except for Jackson County in Southern Illinois (Clinton won 11,634 to Trump's 10,843).  What's my point?  Just because Trump won rural counties in Illinois by massive margins DOESN'T MEAN HIS SUPPORTERS WERE RURAL.  As I just demonstrated, the vast majority of his votes came from those metro areas, which don't even include CLEARLY not rural places like Galena (which Trump won), Decatur (which Trump won), Carbondale (which Trump won), etc.

The vast majority of Republican voters are not rural people.  For every rural Republican voter, there are two that live in a much more populated area that just happens to have more Democrats in it.

EDIT: And, doing simple math from the exit polls, only 22.57% of Trump voters lived in rural communities, compared to 52.26% living in suburbs and 25.16% living in urban areas.  So again, let that sink in, there were more Trump voters living in cities than in rural areas.  It doesn't matter that he won a vast majority of rural counties, they just simply didn't provide the bulk of his support, and that's a fact.

I think that a 150,000 person metro area is going to be culturally rural to someone who lives in a 1M+ metro area.  When people here say "city", they are usually thinking of those 1M+ metros.  And the Trump/Clinton divide really does look like 1M+ metros vs. everyone else!  The census view of urban is too broad to reflect the current cultural divide in the country IMO.

1) I guess we will just have to agree to disagree then, and I will have to stop putting so much stock into the term "urban/rural divide," if that is what it really means.  Given the usual connations of that term, that cutoff is ridiculous; I have lived my whole life in either a metro of around 400,000 (Peoria) or 150,000 (Iowa City), and both have had tons of people who are quite educated, both areas have every store/restaurant type/summertime event anyone would need, both get concerts/plays/musicals, etc.  Neither place would seem rural to anyone in his or her right mind.  If these are the types of places (yes, I know Iowa City is a university town and quite Democratic, so let's use all of the suburbs of Des Moines, which went Republican then) that Democrats discount as "rural" when they imagine Republicans as less enlightened than they are, then the joke is on them.

2) Even if I accept your strange definition, the point is that your voters aren't limited to the counties or metros that you win.  Trump lost Chicagoland handily and still had twice as many votes from Chicagoland than all of those other places combined.  There are millions of Republicans and Trump voters that live in places that might have gone Clinton by margins under 10%, which really isn't that lopsided when we take off our political nerd goggles, right?  Again, most Republicans aren't in rural areas, period.

[Hindsight was 2020]

I now the race isn't till June but why no polling for this matchup hasn't come out?

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

People REALLY overrate how many rural voters there are, period.

yeah, rural voters need to vote in spectacular high numbers and for one single candidate to make a difference.

that was "strange" about 2016 - would be hard to repeat.

But my point is that most Trump voters WEREN'T rural.  Just using Illinois, a state that Trump lost by a bad margin, he got 2,146,015 votes.  Of those 2,146,015, 72.67% came from counties that are part of metro areas of 150,000 or bigger:

1,041,346 in Chicagoland
67,906 from the Rockford metro area
58,405 from the Illinois side of the Quad Cities metro area
93,110 from the Peoria metro area
42,314 from the Bloomington-Normal metro area
43,482 from the Champaign-Urbana metro area
54,175 from the Springfield metro area
158,857 from the Metro East (Illinois suburbs of St. Louis)

He won all of those metro areas except for Chicagoland and Champaign.  He also won every single county not included in those metros except for Jackson County in Southern Illinois (Clinton won 11,634 to Trump's 10,843).  What's my point?  Just because Trump won rural counties in Illinois by massive margins DOESN'T MEAN HIS SUPPORTERS WERE RURAL.  As I just demonstrated, the vast majority of his votes came from those metro areas, which don't even include CLEARLY not rural places like Galena (which Trump won), Decatur (which Trump won), Carbondale (which Trump won), etc.

The vast majority of Republican voters are not rural people.  For every rural Republican voter, there are two that live in a much more populated area that just happens to have more Democrats in it.

EDIT: And, doing simple math from the exit polls, only 22.57% of Trump voters lived in rural communities, compared to 52.26% living in suburbs and 25.16% living in urban areas.  So again, let that sink in, there were more Trump voters living in cities than in rural areas.  It doesn't matter that he won a vast majority of rural counties, they just simply didn't provide the bulk of his support, and that's a fact.

I think that a 150,000 person metro area is going to be culturally rural to someone who lives in a 1M+ metro area.  When people here say "city", they are usually thinking of those 1M+ metros.  And the Trump/Clinton divide really does look like 1M+ metros vs. everyone else!  The census view of urban is too broad to reflect the current cultural divide in the country IMO.

1) I guess we will just have to agree to disagree then, and I will have to stop putting so much stock into the term "urban/rural divide," if that is what it really means.  Given the usual connations of that term, that cutoff is ridiculous; I have lived my whole life in either a metro of around 400,000 (Peoria) or 150,000 (Iowa City), and both have had tons of people who are quite educated, both areas have every store/restaurant type/summertime event anyone would need, both get concerts/plays/musicals, etc.  Neither place would seem rural to anyone in his or her right mind.  If these are the types of places (yes, I know Iowa City is a university town and quite Democratic, so let's use all of the suburbs of Des Moines, which went Republican then) that Democrats discount as "rural" when they imagine Republicans as less enlightened than they are, then the joke is on them.

2) Even if I accept your strange definition, the point is that your voters aren't limited to the counties or metros that you win.  Trump lost Chicagoland handily and still had twice as many votes from Chicagoland than all of those other places combined.  There are millions of Republicans and Trump voters that live in places that might have gone Clinton by margins under 10%, which really isn't that lopsided when we take off our political nerd goggles, right?  Again, most Republicans aren't in rural areas, period.

I don't have a particular dog in this fight, but I can anecdotally support the qualitative difference between big metros and small. I grew up in a big megalopolis region (shoreline CT) where the quaint "small towns" post populations of 26,000. New Hampshire is a pretty different pace of life (30,000 gets you considered a very big place up here), and going to college in Chicago, though another big metropolis, has caused me to travel around the Midwest a lot more than I had. It really is very different. 

[GeorgiaModerate]

Trump will be in Atlanta this Friday to address the NRA convention, and will hold a fundraiser for Handel while he's here: http://politics.blog.ajc.com/2017/04/25/trump-to-hold-fundraiser-for-handel-on-friday-in-atlanta/

[GeorgiaModerate]

If you would like to follow the lawsuit that's been filed to reopen voter registration for the runoff (as seems to be required by the National Voter Registration Act, but is not allowed by Georgia Law): https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/21205020/Georgia_State_Conference_of_the_NAACP_et_al_v_State_of_Georgia_et_al

[Hindsight was 2020]

I got a bad feeling Ossoff might be falling behind. You check social media or any news related to him these days an it's all negative getting attacked over not living in the district, a local paper is calling him a "child of privilege", "trying to buy the seat with Hollywoid Soros money". Etc

[Adam Griffin]

Here's turnout by precinct from April 18 as a share of the 2016 presidential turnout:

[Mr. Smith]

I got a bad feeling Ossoff might be falling behind. You check social media or any news related to him these days an it's all negative getting attacked over not living in the district, a local paper is calling him a "child of privilege", "trying to buy the seat with Hollywoid Soros money". Etc

This is what always happens when the dominant party starts losing its grip on power. It begins freakout stage.

This isn't the dominant party. Hasn't been so since Trump won.

If anything, it's more like a Shaggy Dog story in which the dominant party isn't dethroned as hoped despite a moment of weakness.