GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[Tender Branson]

Ugh!!!!!!!!!!

I think their previous poll was on the upper end of the MoE for Ossoff (+7) and this one on the lower end.

I still think he's up by somewhere between 1-5%.

This is also what the Landmark poll shows and they know how to poll this district (see first round).

[Brittain33]

FWIW, Ossoff overperformed the SUSA April poll even if you allocate him half of the undecideds (he had 43% with 7% undecided). All that said, I liked it better when no poll was showing Handel doing this well.

[Stranger in a strange land]

If Ossoff somehow manages to win, do you think that the chances are good that he will join the Blue Dog Coalition? I think he would at least consider it. Based on his platform and personality, he would fit in very well.

There's a decent chance he would but why would it matter? Blue Dogs are pretty much irrelevant these days. There are only 18 of them now, and most of them are pretty different from traditional Blue Dogs.

[Brittain33]

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

[BudgieForce]

SurveyUSA is taking the easy way out and showing a tied race so they dont blow another race again. Its close, but it was never at Ossoff +7. 

[Gass3268]

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

It seems like this this is proactive statement, regardless of what happens.

[The Other Castro]

For people freaking out about polls, an Ossoff+3 race would produce tied and +6 polls at about the same rate.

Also, interesting bit from this poll:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

There's also this, which shows the difference in polling from this pollster could be partially due to the sample used:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Hydera]

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

If you check electproject's twitter. A lot of ballots returned are from republican voters so its safe to assume that Handel has the edge.


The last time that dems led in early voting was may 30.....

[GeorgiaModerate]

EV through yesterday.  As expected, Cobb is picking up a bit now that they have a second location open.

Cobb 18097 (17.6%)
DeKalb 24998 (24.3%)
Fulton 59695 (58.1%)
Total 102790

I played around some with the EV data through Saturday and made a few observations.   A big caveat: this is the first time I've ever tried to look at voting data down to the precinct level.  Here's what I found:

Obviously EV is way up in the runoff compared to the first round.  But it's not consistently up across the district: some precincts are way up, some are a little bit up, and a few are still lagging behind the first round.  (This is comparing the runoff EV through Saturday to the total EV in the first round, so the lagging precincts are still likely to exceed their first round totals.)

So can we say anything about which precincts are up more, versus those up less?  Perhaps.  I plotted the increase in EV against the D share of the total D/R vote in the first round (ignoring the few votes for independent candidates).  This showed a definite trend such that a greater increase in EV was correlated to a degree with higher D% in the first round.

BUT! you say...D-leaning DeKalb has more EV locations this time, while R-leaning Cobb has fewer, so the above trend is only to be expected.  To which I respond: well, this is a very good point.  However, these counties do not uniformly lean toward their dominant party.  All three counties have some precincts that voted very D, some that voted very R, and some in the middle.

So I looked at each county individually.  And I found that considering DeKalb only, the trend held up: within the county, the precincts with the higher D% in the first round tend to have higher increases in EV.  Cobb has the same trend, but to a lesser degree.  The Fulton data is messy; there doesn't appear to be much of a correlation, perhaps a slightly R-favoring one.

To further complicate this, not all precincts are created equal; some are very large and some are tiny.  And since overall vote total is the only thing that counts, it's more beneficial for a candidate to get 55% of 1000 votes than 90% of 100 votes.  So I tried replotting the data as a bubble chart with sizes representing the total vote in the first round.  This didn't really make anything clearer.

What I think this is telling me is that the increase in EV turnout so far is greater in D-leaning areas than R-leaning areas in DeKalb; the same may be true to a lesser degree in Cobb; and Fulton is anyone's guess.  But my confidence level in this is not at all high.

[Hindsight was 2020]

For people freaking out about polls, an Ossoff+3 race would produce tied and +6 polls at about the same rate.

Also, interesting bit from this poll:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

There's also this, which shows the difference in polling from this pollster could be partially due to the sample used:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Actual if you break those numbers down that is an Ossof 2-3 lead

[The Other Castro]

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

I can't tell you what this email means, but they do not think they are losing this race right now.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Always knew this was a nail biter. People were getting way too cocky with the polls. Still calling this for  Handel.

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Always knew this was a nail biter. People were getting way too cocky with the polls. Still calling this for  Handel.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Still Lean D, Ossoff wins by 2-4 points.

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

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

I can't tell you what this email means, but they do not think they are losing this race right now.

They're not going to admit they think they're losing to you, because then they risk you spreading that info and widening Handel's margin of victory, which adds to the Dems can't win narrative. They wouldn't release that memo if they believed they have the race locked up.

[The Other Castro]

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

I can't tell you what this email means, but they do not think they are losing this race right now.

They're not going to admit they think they're losing to you, because then they risk you spreading that info and widening Handel's margin of victory, which adds to the Dems can't win narrative. They wouldn't release that memo if they believed they have the race locked up.

They don't think it's locked up and I never said that. Also, you shouldn't assume the nature of my relationships.

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

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

I can't tell you what this email means, but they do not think they are losing this race right now.

They're not going to admit they think they're losing to you, because then they risk you spreading that info and widening Handel's margin of victory, which adds to the Dems can't win narrative. They wouldn't release that memo if they believed they have the race locked up.

They don't think it's locked up and I never said that. Also, you shouldn't assume the nature of my relationships.

Unless you have some personal connection to the head of the DCCC, they will probably tell you they think they're going to win no matter what to stay on the safe side. Also I didn't say you were saying that the race is locked up, just that if the Dems were confident of victory, they wouldn't release that memo.

[The Other Castro]

The DCCC is out with a "we really tried" memo that sure sounds like it's setting a narrative for a loss to Handel. Um.

https://twitter.com/gdebenedetti/status/874616868409155584

I can't tell you what this email means, but they do not think they are losing this race right now.

They're not going to admit they think they're losing to you, because then they risk you spreading that info and widening Handel's margin of victory, which adds to the Dems can't win narrative. They wouldn't release that memo if they believed they have the race locked up.

They don't think it's locked up and I never said that. Also, you shouldn't assume the nature of my relationships.

Unless you have some personal connection to the head of the DCCC, they will probably tell you they think they're going to win no matter what to stay on the safe side. Also I didn't say you were saying that the race is locked up, just that if the Dems were confident of victory, they wouldn't release that memo.

That's not how that works here. Departments are not going to mislead other departments on the state of races, considering it determines how we use our resources. Much of the information we have on the race is available to more than just individual people.

[Mr. Smith]

Always knew this was a nail biter. People were getting way too cocky with the polls. Still calling this for  Handel.

[GlobeSoc]

If Ossoff is at 47%, the southern "undecided" effect will destroy him.

[Ebsy]

SUSA was pretty garbage in the first round, so I wouldn't put too much stock in one poll. Still, it's been a close race the whole time, so I don't see why a tied poll is causing panic.

[DrScholl]

Miss Enormous Tentacles is not going to win. It's important to remember that Ossoff over performed polling in the first round.

[Adam Griffin]

If Ossoff somehow manages to win, do you think that the chances are good that he will join the Blue Dog Coalition? I think he would at least consider it. Based on his platform and personality, he would fit in very well.

He would have virtually nothing to gain by doing so: the type of voter he's having to win over isn't impressed or appealed to by using the "Blue Dog" label, and many of the base Democrats in the district would be turned off by it. He's not in a situation like Silly David Scott where he can say, do or be virtually anything he wants and not pay a political price for it.

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

I think the livable wage incident was a boost for Handel. We all know how suburbs feel about the peasants.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Miss Enormous Tentacles is not going to win. It's important to remember that Ossoff over performed polling in the first round.

It's also important to remember that this is a tossup, and anybody who claims to know a definite and airtight result has had one line too many. This is Tilt D at best, and Tilt R at the worst. That is why I think this will be a close 52-48 for Handel, BUT I am not exclusively and definately calling it for her. This is very much in play, and either side could win.