Election 2018 Open Thread - Part 1

[Badger]

Braun is losing the Lake by 34 points.  Hoe does fit with previous years?

Mourdock lost it by 40.

F#$k

[Badger]

VA-02 looking good for Luria up 55/45 with 1/4 in

Just saw on NBC. She is down to points with nearly half the vote in.

[Badger]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1059973490445635585

Big?

Bigfoot.

Redistricting reform cannot come soon enough.

[Badger]

RIP McGrath I guess

[Badger]

Well Dems, I hope you're happy about nominating the worst possible candidate possible in 2016 and essentially costing the Senate for the next several cycles in the process

Let's be real here, today would have been far worse had she won.

[Badger]

Dems need someone like Beto running for president in 2020.

[Badger]

Well, Texas is looking pretty amazing. Much of the rest of the country... less so.

Texas uber alles.

What are your thoughts? I'm totally shocked, but thats probably a place I wanna see a dem win just for the reaction and cause Cruz is disgusting.

It still looks to me like cruz is favored, but it will be close. Beto has a shot if the election day vote is better than the early vote.

It usually is in Texas, iirc.

[Badger]

HUGE east-west polarization in ND. Not a good sign for Tester

I didn't realize he had moved States

[Badger]

If it wasn't for dumbass Florida, I'd be feeling great right now.

[Badger]

CNN projects KS3, PA6, MN3, and NY1 for Democrats.

New York one is a pleasant surprise! Nice to see zeldin go down.

[Badger]

Wassup with Lee Zeldin losing? He's WINNING.

It was a typo. New York 11 flipped, not New York 1.

[Badger]

Tragically, Harris is gonna scrape by in NC-09. Truly one of the worst GOP candidates this cycle, and that's saying a lot.

It looks like the gerrymander held in Ohio and may hold in NC. Maps with changes in VA and PA saw a large number of seats turn over. Depressing news given that gerrymandering will continue to be ignored by SCOTUS.

[Badger]

California re-elects fan of the confederate flag.

Who?

[Badger]

Is it too early to say I told you so re: Gillum?

Yes. Very much so, thank you.

[Badger]

Did anybody have Ohio senate race being this close?

Hell no. And I'm shocked. The polls were really off here.

I wonder if Putin is doing a dry run for 2020 in Florida, Ohio, and Michigan? It sure would explain a lot.

Seriously though, I'm kind of having trouble figuring out where Brown ran behind. He seems to be hitting all his benchmarks with stratospheric numbers in Cleveland Toledo, Northeast Ohio in general, plus rocking it in Columbus and Cincy. The best I can tell, tentatively, is that the Republican whose name my voice to text can't recognize overperformed mightily in his congressional district, including Canton Stark County. It's normally a swing County, perhaps a point or so Democratic, but brown ran about four or five points behind his Statewide total.

 He also seems to have run weekly in what would generally be referred to his Ted Strickland's old District. Everything south of Youngstown, which yes I know was technically in Strickland's District, sweeping down through counties along two or three counties deep from the Ohio River through Route 23 in places like Chillicothe in Portsmouth. Brown didn't win a single County outside the People's Republic of Athens in that entire region. Put another way, he didn't win any other County East of Cincy and south of Columbus or Youngstown. Yes, those are largely very rural counties and very trumpy areas, but it includes a number of working class counties with Democratic strength like Ross, sciota, Pike, Monroe, Belmont, Jefferson, Hocking, Etc. The fact Brown didn't win a single one of those counties just demonstrates the Trump ization of Appalachian Ohio.

Otherwise, it looks like the Republican met the goals he needed to in the Suburban counties surrounding Cincy, plus hitting hi benchmarks elsewhere. I'm still surprised though because, if you had told me the numbers that brown was running out of Cleveland, Columbus, since he, Toledo, and Northeast Ohio and general, I would have said he had this race in the bag by a landslide. Just goes to show that now kicking ass and taking names in traditional democratic strongholds are the bare minimum necessary to overcome an increasingly hostile rest of the state.

[Badger]

Democrats retain MA-Gov and VT-Gov

Ah, I see what you did there.

[Badger]

DAVIS STILL LEADS IN IL-13 WITH 95 IN, CNN RETRACTED THE CALL

We get it. You can stop with the all caps posting now.

[Badger]

Kevin de Leon easily won Lassen County. That is hilarious!

Republicans are clearly voting for de Leon. He's winning the entire Central Valley. I don't think it will be enough, especially given the large undervote, but he is doing much better than I expected.

If de Leon beats Feinstein on the back of Republican votes, I think the top two system is going to be repealed.

It should be anyway.

[Badger]

Evers still up with 87% in according to CNN. CNN seems to have forgotten about this one as well.

89% down by about 1,200. “Machine Problems” in New Berlin so likely Republican funny business going on again.

Word on a ad is Walker is now slightly up.

[Badger]

Things will be better for FL with Amendment 4, I have no doubt both Gillum/Nelson would've won if felons could've voted.

What a sad state for Democrats. "If only we get criminals to the polls..."

Dude, you never post on this board. You're showing up just to brag.

Go away. You're pathetic and you have no business here.

[Badger]

Is Jon Tester vulnerable? Also, Arizona is going to be crazy close.

Tester's hope lies in Gallatin County. No where else is likely to be notably pro-Tester.

Not true. Although they're smaller counties, he will likely win Glacier, Blaine, Park, and possibly Roosevelt Counties. Park is Livingston, so that has at least some chance to get him some votes. But yes, he needs to run up the margin in Gallatin as much as possible.

None of those counties have that many votes.

It's Montana. No counties have very many votes.

[Badger]

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

I think the more accurate term is he got Bayhed.

[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.

[Badger]

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).

F*** that. Democrats have to get over trying to win Miss Congeniality or be happy with the silver medal. Go for the win. This is why people have trouble taking the Democratic party seriously.

Democrats need to understand that it is perfectly okay to adopt Vince Lombardi's motto that winning isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing! And yet at the same time not be some date raping Joc from like for example grab a 15 year-old girl in a party cover her mouth keep her against her will while squee turns Up the Volume so others can't hear her struggling.

[Badger]

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.

But it's a self-perpetuating cycle! The court will viciously and ruthlessly exploit every chance of voter suppression through Republican favorable rulings on gerrymandering, voter ID laws, limitation of voting times and places, any and all other administrative measures to interfere with voter registration in Broward County, etc etc etc.

People complained about democracy being broken since the 60s. However, we have never been in such a. Since the Civil War were an extremist minority has crammed its views down the majority of Americans throats.