For those of us who have been watching the national Senate races with only half an eye, this chart from the New York Times is instructive:
If we take the leaners seriously, it means there are only four real Senate races in the entire country. Democrats have merely to beat Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia and they remain in control of the Senate. The other two toss-up states are tougher: Wisconsin's seat is currently held by incumbent Ron Johnson, while Nevada's Adam Laxalt is political royalty as the son of Pete Domenici and grandson of Paul Laxalt. He's also a MAGA nutter, but that may or may not be a negative among Nevada voters.
So that's that. With less than a month to go, there are basically only four seats still in serious competition, and Republicans are surging in all of them. Democrats have their work cut out for them over the next four weeks.
It's important to remember,
--Get Out the Vote drives are the only thing that works.
Get Out the Vote drives are the only thing that has ever worked!
Well, if you're a Democrat. For the other side, voter suppression, voter intimidation, safe districts, and selective vote counting all work, and are greatly preferred.
NC may surprise, which would be nice. The GOP nominee is not broadly appealing and there've been a ton of transplants from the NEast since the last election.
Yeah, I believe Beasley has a chance.
And she's done quite well in fundraising, despite getting paltry sums from national party sources.
The senate is important, but more important are local election officers, because these are the people that will make or break the 2024 election.
Maybe we can multitask and do well in national, state, AND local races
"Maybe we can .."
Or maybe not. Doesn't look to me that there is enough attention to the election of election officers.
Did KD comment on it at any time?
C'mon, Kevin, please. Not "surging." You sound like a fundraising email.
Walker is imploding and Oz is a joke, even if he isn't down by 10 points any more.
NV and WI are where the action is. NV is looking bad.
As a worried Pennsylvanian, I fear Oz is going to win. His campaign has righted the ship and have run non-stop TV ads attacking Fetterman, I believe pretty effectively. Further, Fetterman’s health remains an issue that I don’t think he has addressed very well. The trend is in the wrong direction and I fear Oz will pull it out. The possible saving grace is Mastriano, who should lose easily and hopefully some of his stink will hurt Oz on the GOP side.
Let that fear energize you. Get out & talk to people. Money for ads doesn't mean shit right now. You need to talk to everyone you know about this. Make the points, concede nothing. make sure they vote.
What is it they want from Fetterman on his health?
A promise to live forever. Cause of course the youthful Senate can’t possibly have someone who might have a stroke join it at any time.
Dr. Oz murdered puppies!!!!! Keep telling everyone you know that. In a sane universe that would be like waking up with a dead girl or live boy as the old saying went.
In a sane universe Herschel Walker would be behind by 30 points in Georgia. We no longer live in a sane universe. Or, arguably, voters are actually the most ruthlessly sane they've ever been, and they're well aware candidate quality doesn't much affect their lives. What affects their lives is whether blue or red priorities prevail in Washington, DC.
Walker's campaign is imploding in GA and while Oz -- for some inexplicable reason -- has slightly narrowed his gap with Fetterman, Fetterman's lead at this point is still well outside the margin of error. NV and WI look like they're not going to pan out, unfortunately, which is too bad because Ron Johnson esp. is one of the worst people on earth.
My read exactly.
NV should pan out. The actual vote has been more D than the polls for several cycles. I still give Barnes a chance in Wisconsin & Ryan a chance in Ohio.
Has everyone decided that Hassan is not in any trouble?
Yes, Mitchie just canceled a huge adbuy in the Boston market. So McConnell thinks that one is done.
Also NV has been trending red since Reid died and Biden has shit outreach to hispanics. Aldo after the left won control of the state party the moderates split the party rather than go along. Damn that murderous fuck Telles, Jeff German was THE go to guy for Nevada races.
Also NV has been trending red since Reid died and Biden has shit outreach to hispanics.
I wonder if there has been something of a Florida-ization effect in Nevada. That is, places traditionally known for affordable housing tend to attract more downscale newcomers. A quite vast number of California residents have decamped for other states in recent years; perhaps the more affluent among them have tended to head for Colorado, say, and the PacNW (and these days Austin and Boise), whereas Nevada has attracted a large influx of working class folks.
In general, rapidly growing states appear to exhibit quite different rates of "blue-ization." Virginia, Colorado and Washington State have all grown sharply more Democratic-leaning over the last couple of decades. Whereas Florida, Texas and maybe Nevada have shifted more slowly. (The GOP in all three of these states has benefited from Dem slippage among Hispanic voters, too, I should think).
If your growth is being powered mostly by booming knowledge industries, you're going to attract a lot college-educated, Dem-leaning voters. If it's low cost of living and the service sector that are attracting your newcomers, the path to liberalization is less rapid.
Unfortunately, it looks like Laxalt might narrowly pull out a victory in Nevada. It's a bummer to see Maestas go down to a Trumper, but maybe next time we'll do better. He's definitely benefitting a bit there from hispanic voting shifting to match overall American voting patterns.
Walker might actually beat Warnock, just on name recognition and Trump support.
I'm not going to bet against Johnson in Wisconsin. He might be the dumbest Senator in DC, but he seems to be a persistent SOB in terms of elections. A lot of the folks who ultimately vote for him don't seem to answer pollsters.
Fetterman was crushing Oz until recently, but it's narrowed a lot. That stroke was ill-timed.
The stroke was months ago. The narrowing was only recent as Rs started coming home.
I'm not going to bet against Johnson in Wisconsin. He might be the dumbest Senator in DC, but he seems to be a persistent SOB in terms of elections
He also benefits from being in very white state with some very conservative, white voters. Wisconsin, like all very slow-growing, white Midwestern states, has had a challenging time holding onto its younger, better educated voters. This dynamic has tended to shift its electorate older and (much) whiter than the nation. And so the state's traditional Northern European progressive tradition has seriously weakened with time.
It's not as far gone as Ohio, and it may not ever get there. I certainly hope it remains purple. The Madison CSA by all accounts is Wisconsin's most vibrant and fastest growing metro (plays a role similar to Columbus in Ohio). So there's that. But it only accounts for about 15% of the state.
It's great that Democrats cleared the field and did no oppo research whatsoever on Mandela Barnes, who is running against Ron Johnson. Barnes has said and done things that make him vulnerable to charges he is a supporter of "defund the police", which is a sure vote getter outside of Milwaukee and Madison.
A standard-issue moderate Democrat could defeat Johnson. Barnes? Unlikely.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/07/politics/kfile-mandela-barnes-signaled-support-abolish-ice/index.html
As a Wisconsin resident living outside the Milwaukee/Madison area, your post was the polite way to say that a good portion of WI will not vote for a black person. Period.
"A standard-issue moderate Democrat could defeat Johnson. Barnes? Unlikely."
You spelled 'white' wrong.
Something nobody has mentioned so far is the democrat polling bias that has consistently shown up, election after election. It's like nobody remembers Hillary's polling numbers and how she still lost. Are we seriously doomed to repeat history once again? All this overconfidence in the comment section could very well hit the brick wall of reality, yet again. It's unfortunate nobody is willing to learn from history.
Personally, I'll count us lucky to still have 50 seats after November. But I'll keep fighting, because every seat won/kept now, helps us both 2 and 4 years from now.
This may not be a very good example:
“It's like nobody remembers Hillary's polling numbers and how she still lost.”
So I’m going to speak from memories that are now several years old, and, without bothering to look this stuff up again, I’m going to point out that pre-election polls showed Hilary with something like a 3-4 % edge in the national popular vote;
And, when all was said and done, that turned out to be fairly accurate. Hilary DID win the national vote by approximately 3 %. The predictions were not very far off.
Where Hilary lost, of course, was in the electoral college. But even that was predictable. I happen to remember reading, several weeks before the 2016 election, a Nate Silver article on the 538 website in which he pointed out that the excessive concentration of Hilary voters could lead her to win the vote but lose the electoral college. And he was obviously right.
So I’m not sure the 2016 contest is the best one to bring up; we may not have expected trump to win, but we also shouldn’t really have been all that surprised based on the available info and analysis.
Americans are awful people. As so many flirt with or support evil, I’m left wondering why I should give a crap about them? Oh wait… I don’t. My contempt will undoubtedly be justified and validated by every upcoming election.
We tend to see what we're looking for.
I’d rather not see it, but there it is.
Pretty sure Cook's got North Carolina and Ohio wrong. They're toss-ups at this point, too.
IOW, the Biennial National Gas Price Referendum will come down to the wire.
Not sure this qualifies as a surprise.
+1
Lots of perfectly reasonable people support trump… who knew?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/09/what-lincoln-project-founders-have-in-common-with-trump-voters-00060993
“In truth, the mindset of an ends-driven Trump voter isn’t so different from the mindset of a political operative: a mix of high-minded principle and ruthless practicality.”
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