Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Hey guys Atlas didn't crash! Thanks Dave!!!

And Virginia, for crafting the changes to help keep it up.

If Virginia in charge of the IT side of Atlas?

I made a thank you thread to Virginia (and Dave Leip). Post about it there to avoid cluttering up this thread.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=306068.0

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

MO finally called. Is anyone else thinking Arizona is gone too?

No. Election day vote in Phoenix and Tucson are barely starting to be counted, whereas at least some rural R areas like Prescott have already reported.

Plus there are 100K+ ballots that won't be counted until more than a week from now in Maricopa county.

Basically it is almost all early vote, where Rs traditionally do better IIRC than election day in AZ.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Fox projects Scott wins in FL.

It's officially not a wave, and just a weird election.

It is ludicrous to call an election in which Dems win the popular vote by 7-10% or whatever it turns out to be anything but a wave.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Fox projects Scott wins in FL.

It's officially not a wave, and just a weird election.

It is ludicrous to call an election in which Dems win the popular vote by 7-10% or whatever it turns out to be anything but a wave.

A wave where a 3 term Democratic incumbent senator loses in a state that voted twice for Obama and that Hillary only narrowly lost?

Your question implicitly concedes that "states" are what matter rather than representing the will of the people as expressed through their votes. I do not concede that. If the electoral system does not represent the people's will as they express them through their votes, then the problem lies with the electoral system, not with the people's votes.

But in any case, yes, you always have a certain number of tough losses in a wave. For example, Rs losing NV and CO senate races in 2010, and generally performing badly on the West coast despite doing very well elsewhere in the East and Midwest. This is not really characteristically different from that at all. So if 2010 was a wave, than this is as well. And it is not really reasonable to say 2010 was not a wave, I don't think.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It's obviously a really big deal that your party lost the House, even though the districts were gerrymandered back in ~2011 for this not to be possible this decade.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

One thing that I think should be heartening for the Democrats from this result is that this looks like a pretty durable House majority. There are very few seats that they won in very Republican territory (really only Kendra Horn's shock victory in OK-05 comes to mind) that would be vulnerable in 2020 or guaranteed losses in a Republican wave, while the Democrats have a number of opportunities where they came close this year with weaker candidates or where attention was not focused to build on the majority further in 2020.

Yeah, this is a good point. And there are a large # of TX Congressional incumbents who are going to be looking very leery at the TX-SEN result when it comes time for the next redistricting - especially if Dems also contest TX in 2020 (which seems all but certain now) and if they do at least reasonably well there.

It is not likely that the Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio megalopolises are going to trend R, and that is going to limit future R gerrymanering in TX, which means more Dem House seats there.

Williamson county voting for Beto... Tarrant county voting for Beto... Collin County and Denton giving such small R margins... Fort Bend going 10 points for Beto...

And there are so many more voters just waiting to be registered and turned out.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Fox projects Scott wins in FL.

It's officially not a wave, and just a weird election.

It is ludicrous to call an election in which Dems win the popular vote by 7-10% or whatever it turns out to be anything but a wave.

A wave where a 3 term Democratic incumbent senator loses in a state that voted twice for Obama and that Hillary only narrowly lost?

A lot of this was due to expectations not being met.  This, like 2016, was supposed to be a great victory.  It wasn't, though it was still a victory. 

Your question implicitly concedes that "states" are what matter rather than representing the will of the people as expressed through their votes. I do not concede that. If the electoral system does not represent the people's will as they express them through their votes, then the problem lies with the electoral system, not with the people's votes.

But in any case, yes, you always have a certain number of tough losses in a wave. For example, Rs losing NV and CO senate races in 2010, and generally performing badly on the West coast despite doing very well elsewhere in the East and Midwest. This is not really characteristically different from that at all. So if 2010 was a wave, than this is as well. And it is not really reasonable to say 2010 was not a wave, I don't think.

NV and CO were both Democratic held seats. Wave elections don't usally have one party losing 4+ Senate seats and gaining at most 2 Senate seats.

Usually the Senate map is not so unbalanced as it was this year.

As for whether seats are D held or R held, that doesn't matter much. That is the idea that incumbency is important, which it should be clear from these results is not nearly as true as it was a decade or two ago. Incumbency is less and less important (though of course it does still make some difference, it is a comparatively minor factor).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Democrats really messed up in the Senate this year, and it will make it extremely tough to win it in 2020. Depending on how Arizona, Montana, and Nevada break tonight you could have anywhere from 53-56 Republicans in the Senate for the next two years. The 2020 map isn't so great for Democrats either, and they will most likely lose Alabama so long as the Republicans nominate someone who wasn't dating under age girls. They'd need to pick up Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina in 2020 to have a chance.

Dems did not mess up on the Senate. The Senate's electoral system messed up on the American people.

The Dems are going to easily win the Senate popular vote by a very large margin (probably more than the House), even without California. Dems appear to be on course to win the popular vote by about 10% (according to what I am hearing, but I can't find actual numbers yet, but we will have them soon enough).

A system in which people in Wyoming count 69 times more than people in California is fundamentally flawed and must be either abolished or fundamentally changed in some of various possible ways to make that no longer be the case.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

I think TX is more about Cruz's quality as a candidate then anything significant long-term.

Tell that to Pete Sessions, John Culberson, about 5-10 other Republican representatives who had closer calls than they ever thought they would have in their gerrymandered safe seats, and a very large number of state legislative and local elected R officials who lost (or who had much closer races than they ever expected, and are aware that Texas is not getting any whiter).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

The Democrats came within 5 points or less of winning *five* more House seats in Texas, which would have taken them to a *majority* of the Texas House delegation. They didn't manage it, but I wouldn't want to be the one to tell John Carter, Kevin Marchand, Michael McCaul, Will Hurd or Chip Roy -- or, for that matter, Pete Olson, Dan Crenshaw, Roger Williams or Ron Wright, who all won by less than 10 points -- to relax, don't worry, this will all blow over, they're safe long-term, it was just about Cruz.

This wasn't just about Cruz.

And moreover, Cruz will be up for re-election in 2024.

That means 6 more years of demographic change. 6 more years to register more voters. 6 more years for old whites to die, and for more moderates and liberals to move to TX from out of state.

And in 2024, there will be Presidential turnout. Even though obviously turnout was great in TX, it was still a midterm. Imagine how many new people would have voted if the President were on the ballot this year, and not just Beto and Cruz? Should be pretty easily another few million.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Tester is going down, sadly.

Devastating news. I can't call this night anything but a loss with a result like this.

It is indeed a loss for American democracy and the legitimacy thereof.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Just going to point this out... Kara Eastman is only down by 4 in NE-02 with 88% reporting.

Maybe, just maybe, if national Democratic groups like DCCC, House Majority PAC, etc which spent hardly anything there had spent a few million more there instead, perhaps it could have been enough.

But we will never know, because they never really gave her a chance.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Carson City dropped in Nevada. Heller wins it 54-41, which is a slight underperformance on margin compared to Trump-Clinton (Trump won it 52-38). Nothing to indicate anything but a Rosen victory thus far.

Yeah, given how well Dems have been doing in urban and suburban areas, it would be pretty shocking for anything other than Rosen winning. Likewise I think Sinema will probably end up winning AZ in the end (will take a week or 2), but it will of course be close, and it is quite possible it could still go to McSally.

Basically anything urban/suburban = death zone for Rs. Anything rural = death zone for Ds. There are a handful of exceptions here and there, but they will be Blanched away over the next couple of cycles.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Tester up to 89% chance on NYT.

If the West comes through (MT/AZ/NV) and stops the bleeding to R+2, it's really a pretty good night for the Democrats given the map.

538 is Giving Heller a 95% chance for some reason


Have no idea why Nate Silver hasnt explained that

I am pretty sure the 538 model is not based on county level results at all. It just is based on the current # of votes counted, regardless of geography. There is no sub-district or sub-state model.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

California update:

1. DeLeon is doing ridiculously well. We'll see what happens as the remaining 70% comes in.

2. Jeff Denham is probably going to lose. Stanislaus County, which is supporting him, is almost completely done counting, whereas bluer San Joaquin is only just coming in.

3. Katie Hill vs Steve Knight is still a complete tossup.

4. Young Kim looks good, but it'll depend on what bits of Orange County are still outstanding.

5. Mimi Waters also look good, but it could absolutely go either way.

6. Levin and Rouda both look on track to win.

7. Duncan Hunter (blech) also looks safe.

Anything in CA that is close now is most likely to go Dem, if past California results are anything at all to go by. In the past, Dems always gain over the next couple of days after the election. The Dem votes by mail that come in at the end always get counted last.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Yeah, people here feeling very optimistic after that Washoe number.

If by "feeling optimistic" you mean realizing that the race is over and can be called, yeah.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

OMG. At 98% in, Evers is UP narrowly again. And most of the outstanding precincts are in La Crosse County.

There were apparently a bunch of uncounted ballots in Milwaukee (despite saying it was all in), don't know if those are included in the count you are referencing, but they may be, or maybe not.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Wait what

But then how does that explain when Beto was leading Cruz chances were over 90%

It could be an issue with the 3 different results systems that are counting votes separately (or one updating more quickly than the other). The 538 model may have been looking at one, while you were looking at the other.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Arizona seems like it's taking forever to come in again

It will take more than another week.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Well in the end Beto did win Tarrant

If you chopped off the Texas panhandle and gave it to Oklahoma and/or a chunk of East TX and gave it to Arkansas, Beto would have won.

It was only the rural counties of TX that saved Cruz. The rural counties, many of which are losing population overall, and most of the rest of which are losing white population.

That is old Texas. New Texas is the megacities, and New Texas is strongly Dem trending.

The Republican Party of Texas is now the Party of Old Texas.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Well in the end Beto did win Tarrant

I said earlier in the night this might happen. If this doesn't start ringing fire bells I don't know what will.
Cruz literally just said Tarrant is the biggest reddest county in the biggest reddest state.

Yeah, Tarrant is huge. Dems are going to start winning county-wide races in counties like Tarrant, Williamson, etc over the next decade or so, which is important because it means that Dems are going to be in charge of administering elections in those huge counties in the future. Which in turn makes it easier for Dems to win statewide, because they will do things to make it easier for Dem-leaning voters to vote, rather than suppressing the vote. Likewise in Harris/Dallas/etc (Harris still had an R county clerk - it is not going to be electing more R county clerks very often in the future, I don't think).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

It is clear that the Atlas community definitely overhyped Democratic chances in many of these races. Democrats themselves overhyped their chances. Yes, there are many warning signs for Republicans (such as in Texas), but the "blue wave" seems to be manifesting as a "blue ripple". 

I just figured the polls would be about right. Looks like they were in terms of overall House performance. But the Dems were over-favored by the polls in the red state senate races.

The polls were right, and the polls were wrong. The best way to think about polls in general is that they are a cloud that roughly measures results, but has systemic and unpredictable biases. That is basically what happened here - there was a lot right in the polls (they were clearly much better than random chance), and some things wrong too.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Thank the Gods that it looks like Walker is going to lose. So basically, other than OH and FL, Dems won all the Governorships that we wanted to win for redistricting. Not having Iowa is not nice for the people of Iowa, but is irrelevant to redistricting.

And in the case of OH and FL, there is at least (hopefully) some sort of redistricting reform to somewhat limit the damage that the GOP can do.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

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Democrats were never favored to win the senate, even you said this yourself. They won the house fairly easily even with the gerrymandering and look to be on pace to win 30-40 seats.

Honestly, Dems are never going to win with some of you no matter what they do.

They weren't favored for the Senate overall, but there's no reason Arizona should be this close, no reason Florida should've been lost, and no reason the margins in Indiana or Missouri should've been what they were, or the seat retentions in the upper Midwest. And we're looking at the increasing possibility of Tester losing as well.

And remember without the Senate the GOP owns the courts--unlikely as it was I would've taken it over the House which doesn't stop Trump's long term damage.

Arizona is very slow at counting, you can't really say how close it is yet. McSally was a good candiate - Sinema was not fortunate to be running against Arpaio or Ward. It would have been nice for Sinema to be clearly winning, but for AZ, a state which has voted R for basically everything for basically forever, and where a significant part of the Dem base includes low turnout demographics such as Youngs and Hispanics, this is a great result especially in a midterm year, and suggests Dems can do well in AZ in the future (including competing there in 2020).

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

And remember without the Senate the GOP owns the courts--unlikely as it was I would've taken it over the House which doesn't stop Trump's long term damage.

Rs do own the courts for the moment, yes. But this result just makes it all the more inevitable that by the time Ds finally do win back the Senate (which could well take a decade or possibly even more), there will be Court packing and fundamental reform of judicial nominating process in a way that is more legitimate and democratically representative of the people's votes.