Election 2018 Open Thread v2 - Mia, Mimi, Gil, and T.J.

[Nyvin]

Looks like CA-48 won't end up being all that close.

This is from yesterday, but as far as I can tell Rohrabacher still hasn't conceded the race.

https://www.courthousenews.com/long-term-incumbent-refuses-to-concede-in-us-house-race/

[Tintrlvr]

I actually don't really want Cox to win as I feel like he'd perennially have trouble holding the seat down as an Anglo

He'd probably be knocked out of the top two in 2020 by a Latino Dem.

[NOVA Green]

Anyone have any insight into TX-23? How many absentees are left? Ortiz-Jones attended new member orientation.

Provisional ballots are being counted, but a judge denied more time to count them and a deadline is coming up.

There are major problems with elections and voting transparency in Texas overall that makes the State extremely ill equipped to handle extremely large voter turnout, especially outside of Presidential Election Years:

1.) In recent decades there have been very few competitive statewide elections.

2.) VAP Registration and Voter Turnout numbers rank some of the lowest in the US.

3.) Successive Republican dominated Texas State Administrations have promoted policies that essentially promoted "free market alternatives" to provisioning of traditional Government services, while essentially filling gaps in "essential services" such as education and highways, at the expense of funding County and Municipal Governmental entities to provide "non-essential services".

4.) What this leads to is a record Midterm Texas voter turnout, where County election offices such as Bexar are ill equipped (Under resourced in terms of staffing) and not funded to pay the massive OT involved for public sector workers to properly fulfill their duties and responsibilities in order to process what is likely a major Tsunami of Provisional Ballots to meet the State Legislated deadlines.

This is a classic "starve the beast" state, and I say that will all due fondness for a State I called home for Four Years not so long ago.

5.) Bexar is a county with almost 2 Million People, and San Antonio is not only one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, but also one of the largest.

Within CD-23, Bexar traditionally accounts for almost 50% of the Vote Share, and that number consistently grew between '12 > '16.

Although it is the largest "Vote Bank" for 'Pubs within the District, it historically has had significant major strongholds of DEM voters, as well as a fairly educated upper-middle class Anglo population.

Although we don't know how many Provisional Ballots are out in the Bexar County part of CD-23, I would not automatically assume that they would be as Republican as the official numbers posted (and quite possibly result in net DEM vote gains).

6.) Still, if we are going to look at provisional ballots potentially getting tossed in the dumpster, I would be even more curious about Provisional ballots out in El Paso County, considering the CD-23 portion of the County is an overwhelmingly Democratic Vote Bank, and it's numbers fluctuate dramatically in Midterm election Years....

So here's a link to a TX CD-23 thread I started a few months back, but was not able to complete the project as I got distracted with some other items.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=300604.msg6454781#msg6454781

[NOVA Green]

Kern has only updated once since election night (or early on 11/9), so there should be another vote dump coming.

Kern has a little over 22,000 votes outstanding. Not all of those will be in this district; maybe 8,000 will be. They include some late VBM ballots but are mostly provisionals. (While the California SOS is not always the most up-to-date source on remaining ballots, it says Kern was updated on 11/11 when the county last reported updated totals on 11/9, so I'm fairly confident that the numbers here are accurate for Kern.)

There are some but significantly fewer ballots left in Kings County (about 5,000), mostly late VBMs but also some provisionals.

Unclear if there are any ballots left in Fresno County since the last update to the CA SOS was on 11/9 so does not reflect today's report. If I had to guess, I'd say they're probably done on late VBMs but have not reported provisionals.

Tulare County is only a very small part of the district but still has a lot of ballots outstanding overall, though most will be from outside of CA-21.

For what it's worth, I don't think any provisionals have been counted yet in any of the counties in the district (or, at least, not in Kern or Kings; perhaps some were in today's report from Fresno), so we can't say much about how they will break with any certainty. However, based on history in the heavily Latino counties of the Central Valley, Cox will probably win the provisionals even in Kings. Late VBM ballots will probably be about the same breakdowns as what has been reported over the last few days thus far, i.e., Valadao wins them in Kings by a wide margin and Cox wins them in Kern by an even wider margin.

https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/statewide-elections/2018-general/unprocessed-ballots-report.pdf?_ga=2.46213028.2001522264.1542155537-1293758651.1542155537

Thanks for posting this, and obviously as you are an extremely astute observer of the intricacies of the American Election process, which is an extremely impressive achievement, I do want to say your comments tend to jive with patterns we have observed before within these Counties.

So, as an individual who spent a significant amount of labor hours examining the daily ballot ballot returns and updates from California in the 2016 DEM Primary election (Among other California Elections that I have followed) there are several items:

1.) The gap between the SoS estimated ballots outstanding vs actual reported ballots frequently means that there are *fewer* outstanding votes out there than there actually are.

This tends to be most predominant in larger population Counties where the "estimated outstanding votes" were placeholders from early on reporting.

So the following link is not "gospel", as you correctly stated in terms of how many votes are actually out there in California.

https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/statewide-elections/2018-general/unprocessed-ballots-report.pdf?_ga=2.78143383.265837392.1542251129-1193510390.1542251129

2.) The Counties of the Central Valley tend to update least frequently, compared to many parts of Cali, and when they do, they dump larger numbers.

Heavily Latino Counties in Republican politically dominated Counties of the Central Valley, tend to vote later, with a much higher % of younger and minority voters, contrasted against the Anglo Elites that historically have dominated this part of the State.

Even in the 2016 DEM Primary in California in heavily Republican Counties of the District, where most Anglos are Registered Republican or Independent, we observed a massive surge of Democratic Latino Voters towards Bernie Sanders vs HRC, because of younger Latino Voters voting much later in the process, and also seeing a much higher rate of rejected/provisional ballots (Young folks change address more often--- rentals vs ownership).

3.) Honestly, we really don't have much data in from this CD, and frankly these are generally more cash-strapped counties that have high demand for services and less local revenue to fund these services.

4.) Although I'm not gonna call this race, since we really don't have *ANY* idea of how many votes are really out there, *WHERE* they are at, and hell I can't even check the stuff against precinct level tracking data to see what the heck is going on....

5.) Honestly, thinking this district is much more likely to flip than TX-23 at this point.... at least California takes the right to vote seriously and all ballots will be counted....

fwiw there was a thread about the 2016 DEM Primary finale where California featured heavily towards the end of the thread...

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=238320.msg5111279#msg5111279

THANKS for Sharing!

NoVA

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

The guy from Salt Lake Trib says his #s are definitely actual #s reported by county clerks, so Wasserman is overstating Mia Love's chances.

https://twitter.com/RobertGehrke/status/1062914856289034240

Basically right now UT-04 depends on how the outstanding ballots break. If they break with the same proportions as the most recently counted votes, then Love will probably win narrowly. But if they break with the same proportions as all votes overall (including ones that were counted on election night), then McAdams wins narrowly.

This depends partly on if there is any difference between provisionals and late-arriving mail ballots. If the provisionals are more pro-Dem, then McAdams' chances should go up substantially.

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

Aha.

There were apparently problems with voting machines and long lines in Utah County, in particular in Eagle Mountain, which is part of Utah County that is in UT-04.

https://fox13now.com/2018/11/07/what-caused-the-long-lines-to-vote-in-utah-county/

So that may have discouraged some voters from voting and may also partly explain why there was apparently lower turnout in Utah County than Salt Lake County.

[KingSweden]

RIP Flawless Perfect Young Kim and NRCC Chairwoman Mimi Walters

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Katie Hobbs up 6115 votes with latest Maricopa dump (0.28%). AZ-SOS was/is arguably the most important state row office race in the country this year.

I know that SoS succeeds if the governor leaves office, but is there any reason why it’s so important this year? Was Ducey thinking of appointing himself to McCain’s old seat?

If anything we all should go to a vote by mail system.

Yep, one of many components of a new Voting Rights Act the next time Dems get a trifecta. I would say also give people the option to vote at voting centers in person though, like CO.

My county in California (Sacramento) uses that set up. It’s good for people that need assistance or still like to wait until Election Day.

[Sestak]

Katie Hobbs up 6115 votes with latest Maricopa dump (0.28%). AZ-SOS was/is arguably the most important state row office race in the country this year.

I know that SoS succeeds if the governor leaves office, but is there any reason why it’s so important this year? Was Ducey thinking of appointing himself to McCain’s old seat?

Well, part of it is that Ducey probably would have been the NRSC’s strongest recruit in 2020 whether or not he was an incumbent. This then robs the NRSC of their top guy and leaves them with pretty much Ward or McSally rehash.

The other part of it...well...

[NOVA Green]

So looking at the UT-04 CD in Salt Lake County numbers, it's looking like there were really only two places that accounted for Love's numbers....

RIV +785 R between yesterday's dump and todays
SJD  +288 R between yesterday's dump and todays

So question will be, does the rest of the County where McAdams gained net votes including WVC and Taylor, SSLC, etc overwhelm the Republican strongholds that dumped hard yesterday with higher overall TO %?

Plenty of Votes left in Salt Lake County for the DEMs, and if Utah County is mostly cashed out, *AND* the most heavily 'PUB strongholds in Salt Lake County, there are enough votes remaining to hold the narrow DEM margins.

[Landslide Lyndon]

The guy from Salt Lake Trib says his #s are definitely actual #s reported by county clerks, so Wasserman is overstating Mia Love's chances.

https://twitter.com/RobertGehrke/status/1062914856289034240

Yeah, Wasserman can be a wiz with the numbers but he can be pretty obnoxious too. He could have asked politely his colleague to clarify his numbers instead of arrogantly disputing his knowledge.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Galaxy brain at work.

[VPH]

Aren't there over 10,000 provisionals out in UT-04? I think those probably lean more Democratic, but then again Utah does weird things in terms of voting sometimes.

[Torrain]

ME-02 results incoming:

https://twitter.com/MESecOfState/status/1063083553490124800

It'll be a race to count it though, as Poliquin might be able to persuade the courts to stop the count, if he can get a stay on the counting in time:

https://twitter.com/thisdog/status/1063063275020140545

[Gass3268]

ME-02 results incoming:

https://twitter.com/MESecOfState/status/1063083553490124800

It'll be a race to count it though, as Poliquin might be able to persuade the courts to stop the count, if he can get a stay on the counting in time:

https://twitter.com/thisdog/status/1063063275020140545

It's on, like Donkey Kong!

https://twitter.com/thisdog/status/1063092677338652677

A Trump appointee judge no less (to be fair he was bipartisan recommendation by Collins and King).

[ON Progressive]

Katie Hobbs’ lead at 5918. Not sure what county updated but it doesn’t look like Pima or Maricopa

Apache.

[Gass3268]

Katie Hobbs’ lead at 5918. Not sure what county updated but it doesn’t look like Pima or Maricopa

Apache

Also Cox added 180 votes in the Tulare County provisionals:

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1063103638732591104

[Torrain]

Jared Golden is the apparent winner after round two of RCV.

[Gass3268]

Golden Wins!

https://twitter.com/rudnicknoah/status/1063121173716877315

[ltomlinson31]

https://twitter.com/ForecasterEnten/status/1063121037502697473?s=19

[henster]

Surprised it was that close, so how many indies voted for Poliquin then?

[Gass3268]

Surprised it was that close, so how many indies voted for Poliquin then?

Sounds like it was close to a 60-40 split.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Surprised it was that close, so how many indies voted for Poliquin then?

Sounds like it was close to a 60-40 split.

Do we even know the first round results? It seems that they stopped at 95% of precincts.

[henster]

So that exit poll of 90ish% of indies going to Golden was BS.

[Tintrlvr]

Surprised it was that close, so how many indies voted for Poliquin then?

Since this was the first RCV election, I would not be surprised if a very large portion of voters failed to indicate a second choice.