Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[SuperCow]

I think this was the first speech I ever heard from Nancy Pelosi that didn’t make me want to take a power drill to the side of my head.

[RI]

Montana is going to be really close, but I think Rosendale might pull it out.

[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.

[Badger]

Heitkamp losing by less than Donnelly is.... something. Donnelly got blanched.

I think the more accurate term is he got Bayhed.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Joe Cunningham beat that lady that got into a wreck?! Woah, upset!!!!!!

[Storr]

Arizona is making me nervous, but Sinema has more favorable turf out.

Yep, all that is left is 45% out in Apache, 67% out in Pinal (56% for Trump in 2016), and 87% out in Maricopa (which is a lot of votes, by far the largest county in the state).

[Hammy]

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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 has always been close and FL is FL. Them losing in MO and IN by that margin when Trump won those states by double digits is no surprise.

Like I said, it doesn't matter how well Dems did today. You already had your narrative set. I mean you were saying how the Dems blew it in the house earlier in the thread.

That was mostly to get the meltdown out of the way, they did do better in the House than I expected (but worse than pretty much everyone else here expected, but that's on Atlas more than anything)

My point was that the people saying they're underperforming in the Senate, relative to the polls, are correct, and that it's a bigger deal because the Senate is more important because of the judiciary--laws in Congress can be overturned later, judicial appointments can't.

[lfromnj]

Joe Cunningham beat that lady that got into a wreck?! Woah, upset!!!!!!

Stay classy bagel

[CookieDamage]

I am satisfied that Joe M*nchin won, now Bagel has nothing to be so sure about.

[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.

[Tintrlvr]

I don't understand how CNN is calculating the percent in in the various Montana counties. There's no way Missoula County is 100% in with just 22,000 votes, e.g. It had 61,000 votes in 2016.

[Badger]

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.

It'll be tough in Florida since I believe they have that 60% threshold for any Constitutional Amendment, and I suspect anything of this magnitude will be deemed by the courts as requiring a constitutional amendment.

[Hammy]

CNN is horribly behind it looks like--nothing in eastern Nevada is showing up yet and somebody posted an update after Clark County came in from elsewhere.

[Panda Express]

Scott Walker losing is the scalp of the night for sure

[Calthrina950]

Dems also appear to have swept the statewide offices in Nevada. The R incumbent Secretary of State and Controller both lost. Sisolak wins the gubernatorial election.

Overall gubernatorial numbers nationwide are D+7, with some chance the Ds could win Alaska as well, though early results have Dunleavy ahead.

One lesson, I think, that should be derived from these results is that the state by state fundamentals are very important. Fundamentals pointed to Republican victories in Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee, and to a Democratic victory in Nevada. Another lesson is that polarization has now invaded the lower-ballot races, and will be the overriding constant across the board from this point forward, unless a realignment or massive demographic shift occurs.

[YE]

Honestly going back to D-NV after seeing the NV results

[Roronoa D. Law]

I'm biased since its my parents hometown. But why isn't anyone calling SC-01 that is a huge upset? But no CNN wants to find places where Democrats are losing.

[Co-Chair Bagel23]

Joe Cunningham beat that lady that got into a wreck?! Woah, upset!!!!!!

Stay classy bagel

She deserved to lose, glad she lived, but happy she lost, Sanford would have won lmao, the GOP primary people are so dumb sometimes, like Jenkins would have won LMAO.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

538 Gives Heller an over 95% chance of winning

Are they going solely based on the votes counted?

Pretty sure. Nate Cohn’s site only has him at 56%

I'd trust Cohn more, but he does seem a bit over cautious as Scott is only at 57%.

538 now has Rosen at 54% while the NY Times went to >95%.

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

You must be logged in to read this quote.

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).

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

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.

IA Gov could be very relevant to the Senate since Grassley is 85.

[YE]

Dems also appear to have swept the statewide offices in Nevada. The R incumbent Secretary of State and Controller both lost. Sisolak wins the gubernatorial election.

Overall gubernatorial numbers nationwide are D+7, with some chance the Ds could win Alaska as well, though early results have Dunleavy ahead.

One lesson, I think, that should be derived from these results is that the state by state fundamentals are very important. Fundamentals pointed to Republican victories in Indiana, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee, and to a Democratic victory in Nevada. Another lesson is that polarization has now invaded the lower-ballot races, and will be the overriding constant across the board from this point forward, unless a realignment or massive demographic shift occurs.

Spot on, but TX is also trending Democratic and O'Rourke nearly pulled it off.

[gf20202]

MSNBC just had Vaughn Hilliard on from AZ. He says a million votes will be counted over the next 24 hours and then another 300k will be counted Thursday. It's nuts we won't know until Thursday.

[No War, but the War on Christmas]

Can McBath ask for a recount?

[Storr]

Tester down by 1,600 votes with 72% in according to CNN. It's tightening late just like with Bullock in 2016...