GA-6 Special election discussion thread

[heatcharger]

Yes, the district is changing. I volunteered to knock on doors there with my university Young Democrats branch and many people were interested with voting for Hillary. They said Donald Trump scared them, was taking us back to a dark time, they had many friends of different backgrounds, and this is from white people. One white man who attended Reagan inauguration said he doesn't recognize this Republican party anymore. Anybody who says this election is Safe R doesn't know district outside of a bunch data and wikipedia pages. 

Interesting. Do you think Ossoff is the best candidate to win the seat?

[heatcharger]

New poll from Clout Research (R):

Ossoff (D) - 41%
Handel (R) - 16%
Gray (R) - 16%

All GOP candidates combined = 48%. The site this links to is pretty slow at the moment.

https://politicalwire.com/2017/03/20/ossoff-expands-lead-georgia-special-election/
http://zpolitics.com/exclusive-poll-ossoff-strengthens-lead-gop-candidates-battle-runoff/?utm_medium=email

Here's the link directly to that poll: https://www.scribd.com/document/342481175/GA-06-Clout-Research-R-for-ZPolitics-March-2017

The second choice numbers are:

Slotin (D) - 34%
Handel (R) - 16%
Gray (R) - 12%
Moody (R) - 9%
Ossoff (D) - 6%

Trump's approval is:

49% Excellent/Good
50% Fair/Poor

I think some of the 49% Republican voters would defect to Ossoff in the run-off if they feel that their candidate is too/not Trumpian.

Based on this poll, that seems to be the case. I really wish a different pollster surveyed the race though.

[heatcharger]

New poll of possible match ups have Ossoff beating Handel 42-41 an Gray 44-42 http://m.dailykos.com/stories/2017/3/24/1646914/-As-a-new-poll-gives-Jon-Ossoff-a-runoff-lead-the-GOP-drops-another-1-1-million-on-ads

It'd be smart to be weary that undecideds will break towards the Republicans, but this race is looking a lot closer that it was thought to be only a few months ago.

[heatcharger]

It's a toss up and Ossoff is the underdog.

This.

The media is starting to build Ossoff up to be the favorite. Feels like it's gonna end with him coming up a few points short and then a million Dems in Disarray articles will follow.

Agreed. This race is still strongly Lean R because of the fundamentals of the district.

Anyways, here's what the early vote is looking like compared to 2014, however meaningless it may be, with Democrats way up and Republicans way down:

[heatcharger]

   I love the talk about how too many GOP candidates will spread the field too thinly and enable Ossoff to get over 50% in the 1st round  How does this happen, you'd think it would work the other way?  Lots of candidates, lots of campaigning, lots of volunteers knocking on doors etc. should in theory raise overall turnout, thus lowering Ossoffs chance to hit 50, not raise it.

Perhaps some Republican voters may not know who to support in a saturated field, so they may just stay home. Now I think Ossoff is highly unlikely to get 50% in either the primary or the runoff, but it's a plausible theory.

[heatcharger]

Georgia Department of Transportstion says they hope to have I-85 open again by June 15th, five days before a hypothetical runoff.

[heatcharger]

2016 Republican primary voters aren't necessarily Republican voters in this election.

[heatcharger]

Like KS-04 could Ossoff do really well with rep voters?

Cohn has verified "a lot of people who last voted in a Republican primary who are voting for Ossoff" on Twitter, so possibly. Clinton won ~17% of Republican primary voters in this district, so I'd say there's a decent chance Ossoff is getting at least 10% or more.

Getting Rubio (and Kasich) primary voters in suburban ATL seems like a more doable task than flipping registered Rs in Kansas who probably went for Cruz. However, Democrats need to get more young people out to vote on Election Day, because the early vote is looking very old, which means the pool of highly probable voters on Election Day is drying up.

[heatcharger]

Based on the 2% Trump win in Georgia's 6th coupled with the strong wave of Democratic enthusiasm why isn't it at least likely that Ossoff reaches 51% on Tuesday? So far the Democrats are running ahead of their 2016 numbers and this is a suburban Atlanta district. Why would they vote for a Republican if they believe they're voting on the Trump Administration?

I don't have the side-by-side numbers to definitely confirm it, but I'm expecting that a greater share of likely voting Democrats in GA-6 have already early voted compared to who had done so in KS-4 at this comparable point. I remember Cohn saying a few days ago that something like 80% of the people remaining who had a 80% chance or greater of voting in a midterm were Republican or Republican leaners.

That 30-point gap in preferences in Sedgwick between EV (Thompson +22) & ED (Estes +10) could look quite small compared to what we see in GA-6 if there isn't substantial breakdown of usual voting fundamentals.

Will it matter if Ossoff is at 60% in the early vote? According to Cohn, the current EV electorate is 46% D, 37% R, 17% NA, which makes that quite difficult, but perhaps there are a fair amount of "crossover" votes. What % of the overall vote do you expect to come from the EV?

[heatcharger]

A lot of the EV among D voters is from outside Dekalb county:



Means there's a lot of vote for Ossoff to pickup on Election Day. Theoretically at least.

[heatcharger]

Polls in special elections usually aren't much worse than for regular elections for the same office. Polls had Scott Brown beating Coakley after all.

That was a statewide election. Polling of individual districts has always been pretty unreliable, even in general elections.

[heatcharger]

Opinion Savvy‏ @Opinion_Savvy
We're doing one last #GA06 poll for release tomorrow - looks like there's been some movement #gapol


Their last poll was Ossoff 40%, Handel 20%, Gray/Hill 10%, Moody 8%, Others 6%, Undecided 6%.

I'd like to see the runoff matchups. I still think the Republican is going to have some trouble consolidating support since the field is so divided.

[heatcharger]

Did RRH poll Trump approval within the district?

46% Approve
46% Disapprove

[heatcharger]

I mean Lujan does need to go, but this isn't why.

Why?

[heatcharger]

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Apologies, the poll has the race for third tied.

Pretty good poll for Ossoff. Even though 50+1 is quite unlikely, 17% for Handel isn't that strong of a 2nd place finish. I really wish the runoff was only a few weeks from now rather than in mid-June, which, in theory, gives Handel plenty of time to consolidate Republicans.

[heatcharger]

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/853052281792671748

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40% chance of showers and thunderstorms on Tuesday as well. Should be interesting.

[heatcharger]

Yet the early vote is still much older, whiter, and more male than in 2016...

Also important to note that the most nonwhite part of the district never had a good early voting location.

[heatcharger]

^^ Potential runoff matchups from that poll:

Ossoff 47%
Handel 46%

Gray 48%
Ossoff 47%

Trump Approval:

Approve 47.48%
Disapprove 47.79%

Candidate Favorables:

Hill 34/28
Handel 36/50 (wow!)
Ossoff 48/47

[heatcharger]

Emerson poll:

Ossoff 43%
Handel 17%
Gray 15%
Moody 9%
Hill 6%

Runoff matchups:

Handel 49%
Ossoff 47%

Gray 50%
Ossoff 45%

Hill 48%
Ossoff 45%

Moody 49%
Ossoff 46%

[heatcharger]

Thanks for posting this. Ossoff only at 33% in Cobb County, huh?

It's a small sample size, and the poll also has Ossoff doing worse in DeKalb than in Fulton, which seems quite unlikely, but none of these numbers are good news for Ossoff. He needs to run it up in DeKalb and Fulton and stay afloat in Cobb, which doesn't seem to be the case, according to this poll.

Regardless, I don't really know what to expect for tomorrow. Special elections are too unpredictable.

[heatcharger]

Another Clout Research poll:

Ossoff 41%
Gray 17%
Handel 15%
Hill 10%
Moody 9%

[heatcharger]

Let's just lock this thread down until 7.

[heatcharger]

D.C. absolutely has the worst traffic, although Atlanta's infrastructure seems to be piss poor.

[heatcharger]

Metro ATL always takes forever to report. It's probably worse than NOVA in that aspect.

[heatcharger]

Conor Sen‏ @conorsen
BREAKING: Ashford Park Elementary in DeKalb reports. Ossoff with 53.0% of 827 votes cast. Hillary got 45.6% here.

But there's also this:

Conor Sen‏ @conorsen  
 BREAKING: Ashford Dunwoody Rd in DeKalb reports. Ossoff with 47.9% of 1121 votes cast. Downtick from Hillary’s 51.8%

And this:
Conor Sen‏ @conorsen
More
 BREAKING: Silver Lake in DeKalb reports. Ossoff with 50.5% of 1284 ballots cast. Hillary at 51.5%.

Doesn't include early vote.