GA-06 and SC-05 election day & results thread

[Virginiá]

lol @ this

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[Virginiá]

True, but my concern is that many of my friends for example (especially those who were anti-Hillary or reluctantly Hillary) will take a losing result as a sign that the DNC has permanently and irreparably failed.

Probably. Whenever I talk to people about this offline I tend to mention that it is a district that isn't even supposed to be competitive, and is only having a special election now because Trump's team thought it would be filled by another Republican due to its previous voting behavior.

The fact that Democrats have made this district a toss-up should be cause for celebration on its own imo. Further, despite the huge price tag, which is troubling, it has also shown that while money does help, esp the further downballot you go, it really can't just buy a district that is not favorable to your party. Candidates and partisan leanings still matter.

[Virginiá]

Democrats didn't spend millions here just to make it competitive or come close. Trump only won this district by 1, and he is incredibly unpopular nationally. A loss here would be a setback for them, much more so than KS and MT. I guess you could say the same for the GOP.

Ossoff should win tonight, though, unless something very weird has happened in politics.

Well think about it like this - If Ossoff wins by just 1 point (or something like that), does that actually mean more than if he just lost by 1? Put aside symbolism and narrative stuff, in terms of raw trends, does that extra point actually mean much? If Democrats have already managed to swing this kind of district this far to the left - a district that went for Romney and other Republicans in the past by +23 pts -/+, how can a couple extra winning points matter so much, again, aside from the narrative it would create?

It's not like it would be some fatal blow to recruiting or anything - Trump and the terrible numbers Republicans and himself have been posting have been largely driving that.

[Virginiá]

Imagine how hilarious it would be if the Democrats lost GA-06 but won SC-05, lol.

Anyway, links to the NYTimes and AP results plz?

NYTimes results:
https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/georgia-congressional-runoff-ossoff-handel

[Virginiá]

mmk I went ahead and added both nyt results pages to the main post

[Virginiá]

To keep things in perspective...

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Even that seems off. If Ossoff wins this, there is no guarantee he will win again in 2018. The kind of exposure and support he has generated will probably give him an incumbency advantage, but at the end of the day, it is still a traditionally Republican district until at least a few more election cycles prove otherwise.

[Virginiá]

Should Perez be fired after this? Spending this much on a congressional race and losing is embarrassing.

Perez/DNC didn't fully fund Ossoff. A lot of that was from small donors.

[Virginiá]

Over $6 million came from the DCCC.

So? It's a toss-up race with major symbolic ramifications. It's not like the race was some far-fetched dream.

And 6 million isn't close to his full fundraising figures, meanwhile watching you talk about it, it is as if you're trying to imply they bankrolled his entire campaign.

[Virginiá]

The more I see the how these olds vote, the less I care about preserving Medicare.

Call me a bad person because of it - I already know.

It's hard to blame anyone for thinking that, tbh. We all know they would revolt if it (Med/SS) was taken away from them, yet they keep voting for the people who literally say they want to take it away from them.

The most common excuse I've heard when asking people about this is that they don't actually believe Republicans would do that. If only they actually paid attention, they wouldn't be chancing their votes for some strange reason.

[Virginiá]

Ugh. This one stings. Really makes it feel like Democrats can't win no matter what they do. I think that one lesson to take away from this is that districts like GA-06 are not the "future" of the Democratic Party, and will be much harder for Democrats to win back than districts that are more working class. Clearly, the path to a majority in the House doesn't run through Republican districts that swung to Clinton. It runs through districts like IA-01, NY-19, and ME-02. And it's also obviously the case that flipping WI/MI/PA will be much easier for Democrats than flipping AZ/GA.

I'm not sure GA-6 would qualify as a prime example for the type of district Democrats need to take on. It really wasn't supposed to be very hospitable.

It should mean something to people that Ossoff even came this close, though. Presidential voting patterns do not usually translate into these kinds of downballot performances so quickly. Ossoff performed about as well as Clinton, give or take a little bit. If Democrats have that kind of performance in 2018, that will mean a boatload of seat pickups across the country. Maybe it won't mean a House majority outright, but it'll come very close.

Then again, look at how well random Democrats performed in districts that Trump won by huge margins? We came close in all of the recent special elections. I dunno, I just don't get why Democrats should see this as some sort of confirmation that one strategy or the other doesn't work. If I told you a Democrat would get this close in GA-6 in January 2016, you'd call me nuts.

[Virginiá]

Just correcting this wack-ass image that uses DCCC funding for Group A and total contributions (including small donations) for Ossoff; that uses presidential results instead of House results because it self-cherrypicks the data-points for the narrative they want

This is exactly what I was dreading from an Ossoff loss. It wasn't the idea of missing out on an extra seat in Congress or having a battle-hardened incumbent for 2018, it was that people on the left would all pile on about how everyone else is wrong and the party is a giant failure, while cherry-picking statistics to buttress their argument. That's not even factoring in the idea that these districts have special elections right now precisely because Trump's admin. thought they were safe (and most of them were, on paper) when they snatched the Representatives out of them.

The fact that we even came this close in districts like KS-4, SC-5 and GA-6 should be cause of celebration on its own, except that months of building up excitement and expectations shifted the goalposts so far that now it is somehow a failure and a disappointment and somehow vindicates that suburbs are TOTALLY lost for Democrats and we should take the establishment folks and string them up!

I mean my god folks.

In the end, Ossoff received the exact same % of the vote he got in round 1 - 48.1%. All that money to get the same exact % of the vote. What a complete waste. Democrats should have never tried in this seat.

And right as I clicked post, this comes in and provides a clear example of what I was saying. Should have never tried? Are you kidding? This race was and had been effectively a toss-up, and circumstances provided for a small Handel win. That's what happens in toss-ups. Each side has a good chance, and in the end one wins for various reasons. It's not like Ossoff never had a chance ffs.

Again, somehow a small loss in a previously-safe Republican district was a waste and big mistake? How does that even make sense?

[Virginiá]

Judging from the result in SC-5, as well as the previous specials where results were closer than expected, I wonder if the money really had much to do with the margin in GA-6. I think there has to be a strategy where enough resources are available, but campaigns are more stealth and can catch Republicans off guard.

If you look at the results over the past year, there might be a good argument that there are significant limits to money, but not so significant that the idea of money in politics should be diminished. It really depends on the race, the candidate, and other factors. Money also helps more in races with less attention being paid.

It's also hard to tell because it's not one-sided. Team Handel was still matching Ossoff's investments (although Ossoff's direct funding allowed for discounted ads, so there is that).

In the end though, candidates will raise as much money as they can because consultants are telling them they need this or that, and that there is always going to be that lingering feeling that if they don't do all they can, they might miss out on a possible win.

[Virginiá]

Virginia, Holmes, I understand you guys have obligations to spin this however you can, but let's face it, your party threw everything but the kitchen sink at this race and didn't gain a single tenth of a percentage point over round 1. You aren't winning this in '18, and you're not winning the 7th or some other seat in GA either. If the house  will have a dem majority, it will be because seats flipped elsewhere - the GA  delegation will be unchanged.

You don't really know that, and your entire argument right now is basically "Ossoff lost, and because I think this was a mistake to target, that means I'm right and you're wrong."

All you've done is make statements and act like they validate themselves. You're talking about a seat that was he lost by a few points in each round, not some landslide blowout, Wulfric.

[Virginiá]

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Literally every mid-term election is about the President.

Democrats should talk about the issues, but they would be stupid to ignore the sub-40% approval rating president who is under criminal investigation.

I don't really get why so many people overlook this aspect of midterms. Is it just a giant coincidence that non-presidential year elections happen to be much more favorable to the out party when the president is unpopular?

The party still needs a message for 2018 to help present themselves as a viable alternative, but the real time for a good, comprehensive policy message is in presidential elections. That is when the focus is on one person and their cause.

The main thing Democrats should run on in 2018 should probably be some combination of healthcare (anti-AHCA), corruption and ethics, which includes beating on Republicans significantly for not conducting proper oversight of Trump.

[Virginiá]

So what do you think about my last reply and told why each of those candidates can't be the Dems Reagan

Maybe the left's Reagan won't come around in 2020. Or, maybe that person will run, and you / other people just haven't spotted them yet (or have written them off).

I think it would be incorrect to automatically assume any of us are definitely going to spot that person ahead of time to begin with.

[Virginiá]

Also why does it have to be a "dem Reagan"? The person who beats Trump doesn't have to be a democratic Reagan it can be the next FDR or maybe they become the standard bearer president

I just take it to me the Democrat's version of a president who realigns the country's dominant ideological leanings, or rather, delivers on an existing 'realignment' that has been ongoing for years beforehand. Since Reagan was the last person to do this for either side, it doesn't seem inappropriate.

But I still dispute the idea that we'll 100% see this person coming before they even run.

[Virginiá]

0 Cross-over appeal - This guy got 0 cross-over appeal, no Republican votes.

I'm confused. I thought the polls had him with not-insignificant Republican support? How exactly could he get 47-48% without Republican support? Did he just completely run away with Indies?

He ran against a failed mediocre candidate - Handel is a terrible candidate who has had failed runs for Senate, Gov & is prone to making stupid errors & is by no means to be characterized as an out-standing candidate.

So what? This is exactly the kind of district where basically any Republican starts with an edge. What Hillary and Ossoff's narrow losses here show us is that maybe their performances are something of a hard ceiling for the next year or two at least.

Districts that begin shifting against their previous party tend to take time to do so. The shifts that happened recently in GA-6 seem to be sticking, but they were never enough. I think Ossoff could have carved out a tiny win if everything went right for him, but everything clearly didn't.

Blew a whopping 30M - For all that money, those many donations, those many volunteer hours, taking those DNC/DCCC resources away from other potential races, he has to answer & deliver. Business executives have to answer for a failed situation or when they blow up money, why does a politician get total immunity?

I can agree with the idea of blowing 30m being stupid. At some point, politicians need to understand that it is possible to waste a ton of money, and that it isn't always necessary to constantly fundraise. 2016 and GA-6 have shown us that money does have its limits, and I'd rather strategists find those limits rather than set fire to countless more millions.

However, a theory that makes some sense is that the massive attention and money this race got is exactly what motivated previously unmotivated Republicans. This is something to keep in mind even for Bernie-esque candidates who may catch fire in the future.

Did worse than Hillary Clinton - While Hillary trailed Trump by 1%, Ossoff lost by 4% even when Trump is doing terribly. Handel is not a strong candidate either. Everywhere people have over-performed Hillary, Quist by 15%, Thompson by 20%, the SC person too. Ossoff went down with record money & support.

This is kind of disengenous. He performed about as well as her in the 2nd round, and beat her numbers in the 1st round. What you're talking about is his losing margin. The important thing is he managed to keep the overall base of votes that Hillary developed in that district. Further, even considering what you're saying, +/- a couple points is hardly anything to gripe about in the first place.

I feel like you're just reaching for reasons to buttress your argument here.