Who Ran The Worst Senate Campaign in 2018?

[Webnicz]

Mcsally. I remember watching Fox one morning hearing her called “the best republican recruit for senate” along with her theme of *TOUGH FIRST FEMALE FIGHTER PILOT* in a state that traditionally loves electing veterans. Yet she blew it to a radical code pink activist who committed treason (her words not mine)

The last month of the campaign it was noticeable that mcsally had given up (i.e. when she accused sinema of treason) because she knew she was going to be appointed to the senate anyway(why else did she leave 1mil in her campaign?)

[Sestak]

Nelson definitely dropped the ball the worst.

[KaiserDave]

Worst? Bill Nelson and it's not particularly close. An atrocious Hispanic outreach apparatus, weak GOTV, and no ads till too late. Bill should've won that race handily, I'm talking 3-4 points. Rick Scott was a very flawed candidate who, with a well run campaign, would've been picked apart and the race would've been solved before October, even with a Hurricane.

In terms of the weakest nominee? I've got to hand it to Corey Stewart, running a Neo-Nazi in a Safe D state was beyond stupid. But I guess that's where the GOP is now.

Other then Corey, Patrick Morrisey was a weak candidate who squandered a very winnable race. Evan Jenkins would have won.

[Mr. Smith]

Pretty much every candidate that lost potentially competitive races, with the exception of Beto O'Rourke and John James, ran awful campaigns to be honest. Corey Stewart was probably the worst candidate, though.

Nah, Mike Espy did an amazing job for what could be expected.

[junior chįmp]

That's not true. There are plenty of factors that candidates can control when running for office. Not making gaffes and fitting your message to the area's local political views are just two that come off the top of my head.

Nahhh. Theres been far too much research into political campaigns and its generally been observed that they are almost entirely pointless:


The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact In General Elections - Stanford University


People dont want to believe it because its human nature not to accept that we are mostly victims of random circumstances with no real pattern and their effects. Its the same reason people believe in the four-leaf clover, the horseshoe, the voodoo fortune teller, postive thinking, prayer, and other assortments of human coping mechanisms for an uncertain world.

You will find on Atlas that the contradictory explanations divvyed out to explain electon outcomes are generally just forms of narrative bias and not actual cause and effect explanations. Humans prefer to believe that there is a cause...any cause...rather than believing that the universe is random and things happen for no reason.

Also....read this if you want to understand what I mean when I say, "most stories that explain election outcomes are just narrative bias."

Why most narrative history is wrong


What I mean to say is that its impossible to establish cause and effect in explaining why a candidate won or lost. Campaigns do nothing and election outcomes are the result of a myraid of unpredictable factors and not some single easily identifiable root cause (eg, candidate said gaffe and therefore lost, candidate won because of award winning TV ads, etc etc...)

[JoeyJoeJoe]

/s/John Barrasso, obviously.  Who here even heard of anything he was doing to try to get reelected?/s/

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Worst three dems in seats dems lost (note out of these people only Nelson really did bad, I just had to pick the least best from the others, though I wish they voted for Kavanaugh, might have been different for them then who knows, that is pretty much the only thing I fault them with though).

1. Nelson

2. McCaskill

3. Donnelly

Worst three dems in seats dems won (alright all three of these were pretty bad)

1. Menendez

2. Stabenow

3. Cantwell

Honorable mentions include Feinstein, but she faced a dem so it doesnt really count, and also Warren.

Worst three republicans in seats republicans lost (oh my god too too too too many to chose from)

1. Fatty Fatrick Shames Morrisey

2. Jim Renacci

3. Matt Rosendale

Honorable mentions include Housley, Vukmir, Barletta, and Stewart.

Worst three republicans in seats republicans won

1. Hyde-Smith

2. Blackburn

3. Cruz

[LiberalDem19]

On the GOP side, Morrissey. Trump won by 40 points, Manchin was beatable. Even with his popularity, he only won by 3.5%, which tells me he could have probably gone down in defeat if the GOP had run a local conservative candidate.


On the Dem side, Bill Nelson. Of the four incumbents who lost seats, his was the most winnable one. Heitkamp, Donnelly, and McCaskill were in deep Republican states, and Nelson was in a swing state. In 2018, he should have won.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Obviously the answer is Nelson.

But Warren didn't run a poor campaign at all.  She deliberately didn't expend resources to run up the score in a race she was sure to win in order to be able to transfer more money to her presidential campaign.

[brucejoel99]

Nelson.

I never panicked about him not spending any money (or not paying attention to Hispanics, or running a tired campaign) because I thought it was just national spin. I thought he was doing what a smart politician does: conserving money until the last 2 months &, then, blitzing. And I thought it was the right move, too, considering Scott had been spending a buttload of money without even managing to escape the MOE.

I thought Bill knew what he was doing, & I was wrong.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Morrisey and Nelson, as those are really the two who definitely could've won their races with a better campaign. While I think some others like Donnelly, Renacci, Barletta, Stewart, and Vukmir ran poor campaigns, I don't think a stronger campaign would've been enough for them to win.

100% this.

[HarrisonL]

Really good analysis, very nice!

[OneJ]

It has to be Bill Nelson.

Gillum gets a lot of hate for losing his race, but Nelson sleepwalked the campaign and acted as if he had it in the bag for a long time and proved Politico right. Had he taken his race more seriously, he probably could've pulled Gillum across the finish line. Yet, this didn't happen and people always get mad at Gillum while seemingly forgetting about Nelson.

[HarrisonL]

Bob Hugin ran a pretty bad campaign ngl

[here2view]

Easily Bill Nelson. How do you lose a swing state like Florida in a D+8 year as a three term incumbent? I don't care that he was running against a popular two term governor, he should have won that race.

He was sleepwalking through the campaign until September. Inexcusable.

[Mr. Smith]

Easily Bill Nelson. How do you lose a swing state like Florida in a D+8 year as a three term incumbent? I don't care that he was running against a popular two term governor, he should have won that race.

He was sleepwalking through the campaign until September. Inexcusable.

Burr and Blunt were just as guilty of doing this in 2016 and they slid by just fine.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Easily Bill Nelson. How do you lose a swing state like Florida in a D+8 year as a three term incumbent? I don't care that he was running against a popular two term governor, he should have won that race.

He was sleepwalking through the campaign until September. Inexcusable.

Rick Scott got incumbency advantage in that race not Nelson. Scott was more well known in the state than Nelson and like you said he was a popular governor which gave him the incumbency advantage

[OSR stands with Israel]

Easily Bill Nelson. How do you lose a swing state like Florida in a D+8 year as a three term incumbent? I don't care that he was running against a popular two term governor, he should have won that race.

He was sleepwalking through the campaign until September. Inexcusable.

Burr and Blunt were just as guilty of doing this in 2016 and they slid by just fine.

The difference is Kander was not a popular two term governor if he was Blunt would have gone down

[Xing]

Easily Bill Nelson. How do you lose a swing state like Florida in a D+8 year as a three term incumbent? I don't care that he was running against a popular two term governor, he should have won that race.

He was sleepwalking through the campaign until September. Inexcusable.

Burr and Blunt were just as guilty of doing this in 2016 and they slid by just fine.

In Blunt's case, he was saved by how red Missouri has become. He underperformed Trump by 16, so his performance really was humiliating.