2019 KY GOV Megathread, Andy Beshear wins

[MT Treasurer]

No, Safe R.

IA-PPP: Ernst (R) +4 over Generic Democrat
Atlas: Toss-up

KY-PPP: Generic Democrat +10 over Bevin
Atlas: Safe R

Seems legit.

[MT Treasurer]

Seriously, when did I miss Bevin getting a serious primary challenger?

Goforth wasn't that serious, that's the thing. He ran one badly disjointed ad the whole primary

If that's true then this is incredibly embarrassing for Bevin.

It’s a landslide compared with Bevin’s last primary victory, which I remember only too well.

[MT Treasurer]

What the hell would a Beshear win against Bevin even look like in the general for all the people out there that say it's possible? lol at it happening with a rural resurgence.

Probably something like this:

https://twitter.com/BruneElections/status/1120393401583665157

Thinking Elliott County will vote Democratic is like thinking Loudoun County will vote Republican

Elliott County literally supported a Democrat in a federal race in 2016 of all years.

[MT Treasurer]

Looks like Beshear has this.

[MT Treasurer]

Andy Beshear winning more votes than Bevin is just hilarious.

[MT Treasurer]

Bevin could have an approval rating of 10% and this forum would still call the race Safe R. Should be pretty obvious to everyone that he is in massive trouble.

[MT Treasurer]

Bevin could have an approval rating of 10% and this forum would still call the race Safe R. Should be pretty obvious to everyone that he is in massive trouble.

Less than 10% of this forum is calling this race Safe R.

Maybe it’s because the Safe R KY posters are well... more "vocal" than the rest of the forum (just like the posters who kept telling us day after day that Moore was going to win AL-SEN no matter what), but I wouldn’t be so sure that this year’s race will be a "redux" of KY 2015 when Bevin is far more unpopular than he was in 2015 (although still the same lousy candidate) and the national environment is worse for Republicans today than it was four years ago.

[MT Treasurer]

GOP infighting continues in KY. From Courier Journal:

ELIZABETHTOWN — Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton's fired aide told conservative activists on Saturday that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was behind booting her boss from the 2019 gubernatorial ticket.

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin chose state Sen. Ralph Alvarado, of Winchester, to be his new running mate, much to the chagrin of Hampton's supporters in the tea party movement. [...]

Southworth was terminated from her $81,000-a-year job by the Bevin administration on May 30. Hampton drew attention to the firing with a May 31 tweet that asked Kentuckians for prayers against unknown "dark forces" in the administration who were behind the decision.

The administration's split is becoming a concerning distraction for Kentucky Republicans ahead of the 2019 governor's race against Democrat Andy Beshear.

[MT Treasurer]

I wouldn’t call it a KS-GOV 2018 redux. There will be no Greg Orman in this race, KS is actually trending Democratic, KY's demographics are far less favorable to Democrats than KS's demographics, etc.

[MT Treasurer]

Yeah, Bevin only led in two polls (and even then only narrowly) in 2015 before winning by nine points on election day, most polls had Conway ahead by 2-6. That said, I’m not predicting that this election will play out exactly like the 2015 race did, and I’d obviously be a lot more confident about Republican chances here if Bevin wasn’t such a laughably horrendous candidate.

[MT Treasurer]

Probably a good sign for Bevin. I heard just a few months ago that polls had Beshear up by doubles, so Bevin may be narrowing the gap. A few well-timed Trump rallies probably do Beshear in and he ends up losing 53-46 or something. As for my friend MTTreasurer's point on the polling however, the reason Bevin outperformed polling so much is that the turnout in that election was anemic. I don't expect that to happen this time.

Yeah, Bevin clearly benefited from the R-friendly national environment/enthusiasm gap in 2015, and I don’t see him winning by nine points this time unless his approval rating improves significantly for some reason.

[MT Treasurer]

I still think Bevin wins, but he is doing everything he can to lose, and if he was not in one of the reddest states in America, he’d be f:cked.

Yeah, some things never change

Does Bevin even WANT to win this race?

[MT Treasurer]

This race is really just a question if you think running for reelection with the worst approval ration in the nation will override normal partisan leans. Gubernatorial elections are more prone to swinging, but still on some level conform with the nation. There's a variety of evidence from recent elections to suggest to make a good case for both the partisan and the approval sides.

Unpopular governors winning reelection because the national environment and their state's partisan lean is hardly unprecedented, think Brownback, Raimondo, Blagojevich. However, the national environment isn’t nearly as favorable for Republicans as it was in 2015, so I’m not sure if nationalizing the race or using the Trump playbook will be enough for Bevin. I think the bigger problem for Democrats here is that Beshear is way too liberal for the state on social issues and hasn’t really distanced himself enough from the national party.

The Debbie downers here were saying then, just as they are now, that although Vitter was terrible and everyone (including Republicans) despised him, there was no way he could loose to JBE because Louisiana "hicks" simply weren't going vote for someone with a (D) next to their name.

I agree with this, but keep in mind that JBE is pro-life (and relatively moderate on most other social issues as well) and Democrats have a much higher floor in LA than in KY.

[MT Treasurer]

I don't think Beshear trying to run as more conservative would help him, though, since it would probably be seen as pandering, and people who basically just want someone conservative already have that in Bevin.

I’m not saying he should run a campaign more or as conservative as Bevin or anything, but a more conservative tone on a few hot-button social issues or some distance between himself and the national party certainly wouldn’t hurt. Was JBE's pro-life position viewed as pandering? Was Joe Manchin's Kavanaugh vote viewed as pandering? Hardly.

I think someone like Rocky Adkins would be doing better against Bevin right now.

[MT Treasurer]

Today I learned that the guy who appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to the Supreme Court would be considered a moderate Republican today.

[MT Treasurer]

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55d790f5e4b04ec82cf2bff1/t/5db1ced790cb206ef9b593d4/1571933911898/Results+Release+Final+Kentucky+October+2019.pdf?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. This poll can’t be real. Beshear leading Bevin...by 19

Even if Beshear wins (not impossible), this will probably be the worst Kentucky poll in a long time.

[MT Treasurer]

Crazy to think just 1 week left tbh

Thank God.

[MT Treasurer]

A few maps by Brune, who calculated the county level benchmarks for Beshear (I don’t agree with all of it).

What Beshear needs to do to tie the race statewide:

[MT Treasurer]

I still think Bevin wins, but I have a gut feeling that this will be closer than most people here expect, especially with how unpredictable turnout patterns are in an off-year election and given that Bevin's unpopularity (and the Beshear name, to a certain extent) is exactly the kind of thing which would mitigate the Republican federal trend in a gubernatorial race. I’m sticking with Bevin +5-6, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this one keeps us up late into the night. Certainly not buying that we’ll see a KY-SEN 2014/OK-GOV 2018 redux here.

[MT Treasurer]

If the gop doesn’t do well in these races tonight, what will that mean for 2020 and trump?

Nothing unless they lose MS.

Even losing MS to someone like Hood wouldn’t really mean anything.

[MT Treasurer]

Lol, Beshear with 72% in Elliott and outperforming his 2015 numbers in every county that’s reported so far.

[MT Treasurer]

This is looking terrible for Bevin.

[MT Treasurer]

Beshear and Heather French Henry leading now. Yikes.

[MT Treasurer]

^These rural Eastern KY counties did Bevin in.

[MT Treasurer]

Yeah, obviously this race could have easily gone the other way, and it’s probably fairly likely that Beshear will face a very difficult reelection race in 2023, especially if a Democrat is president. The GOP bench is only getting stronger and it’s hard to find another Republican candidate as inept and odious as Bevin. (I’m by no means predicting that he will lose, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t struggle like JBE this year.)