Hah, good point!
Could it be?
Next Tuesday, either my blood pressure drops to normal levels again, or my head explodes scanners-style. If I meet any “both parties are the same” nonvoters, jail is also a possible outcome.
Huge turnout day in Nevada, and early vote in Texas and Georgia looks good-ish, as much as you can read into that. Florida and Arizona look troubling, but again, it’s tough to draw ANY really positive conclusions from looking at raw vote totals and not knowing how much or little they’re cannibalizing election day votes.
But here’s something interesting, if you want to feel some optimism. ;)
The Siena/NYT-Upshot polling project continues apace in a variety of districts, currently focusing on a bunch of tossup-lean R districts to conclude things. But for the past week or so, with early/absentee voting going on, they (like a good pollster) have been asking people if they’ve already voted, and if so, who for. I mean, that’s a pretty positive “likely voter” screen, if someone’s actually already cast a ballot. :)
And like a good pollster, Siena/NYT is reporting that in their crosstabs, when they talk to people who have already voted.
And the Left/Progressive folks at Data For Progress – one of their political scientists, in this case – has dug into that data.
They explain their methodology pretty well here, and how they’re modeling that all-important “unaffiliated” or “other” category based on the Siena/Upshot data and party files. Again, be cautious and take with a grain of salt here. This again may still be skewed due to sample size, and skewed due to a mistake in DFP’s attempt to build out the modeled partisan scores that Siena/Upshot is using in districts being polled.
God, old white people are twats.
How will we know if Democrats will eeck out a victory and win a bare majority in the House next Tuesday or whether we will see a Blue Wave? I’ve been following the Cook Political Report and a recent post by Amy Walter helped inform how I will be following the congressional results.
Here is what Amy wrote, “Of the 73 GOP-held seats the Cook Political Report rates as vulnerable, 35 of them — or 48 percent — are districts that were won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 and/or by President Obama in 2012. Winning most of those will get Democrats the majority. But, it’s hard to call winning only in districts that a Democratic presidential nominee has already captured at least once a ‘wave.’ To me, a wave means that one party expands its reach into new territory — territory that hasn’t been won before. For example, if Democrats win a disproportionate share of those ‘already won’ districts AND pick up seats in districts where they’ve never won — like Georgia’s 7th held by GOP Rep. Rob Woodall or Washington’s 3rd CD held by Republican Rep. Jamie Herrera Butler — that constitutes a wave in my book.”
Since I’m an East Coast guy I’m probably not going to stay up all night watching the results, especially since we may not know the final outcome until days after the Election (CA and those mail in ballots…) But I’d like to go to bed having an informed idea of what that outcome may be.
So using Amy’s metric and the Cook Political Report map of states with polls that close by 9 PM or thereabouts Eastern Time I came up with this “score card.” If the Dems are winning disproportionately in the New (Wave Election) Territory states (taking 10 or more out of 29) by midnight I think that I will sleep well.
NOTE: This is not a complete list of House races, just the ones that may be decided early enough in the night to indicate the final outcome.
How are others conducting early “scoring” of the Election night outcome?
We appreciate you too. :)
The commercial won me over. The hatred grows. Besides, you’re one of the good ones.
I’m interested in the scorecard, so thanks for sharing, but I’m a little confused. Why are the “wave” territories not ones carried by Trump and Romney? Some districts and especially states fit both criteria (i.e., they were “carried by Clinton or Obama” and “carried by Trump”).
Holy shit Clark County, Nevada. Holy shit Georgia. For both areas, today was the last day of early voting, and the numbers look like the numbers from the 2016 presidential election, not the numbers from a midterm.
So is that fired up Democrats, or terrified Republicans fearful of the Caravan?
I can’t speak to Georgia, but Clark County Nevada is Las Vegas. There are precincts there where Clinton carried 94% of the vote. She won the county-wide vote nearly 2:1. That county is considered the Democratic “firewall” against the rural, deep red counties around Nevada.
https://twitter.com/RalstonReports/status/1058574170047434757
You mean the “Scare-avan,” right?
I swear to God, if the Dems don’t turn out enough to take the House at least, I’m probably going to stroke out.
Wanna not feel pessimistic for a change?
Read this Peter Hamby article. It’s about damn time someone besides me remembered that long-ago, far-distant Virginia 2017 statewide election…
Good read, thanks for linking it.
And, yeah… this is what gives me hope. The early voting numbers and every other indicator (small donations, special elections, etc) indicate this is a huge turnout year, particularly for demographic groups that lean Democratic. I think the votes will be there for a true blue wave.
What keeps me up nights is hacking and fraud. I don’t trust the integrity of our election system anymore. To win a game with a crooked ref, you have to win by a lot.
Yeah, Clark County seems to get bluer with each election, due in no small part I’m sure, to the constant stream of people moving here from SoCal. It’s also super easy to vote. There’ll be around 170 polling places on election day, and the two weeks of early voting has another 90 or so. You get a nice big booklet in the mail showing you where they all are as well as pretty detailed info on all the state questions. So, none of the voter-suppression fuckery like what’s going on in the east and midwest. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than 10 minutes from walking in to hitting the booth.
Young and new voters surge in early voting.
“The number of voters between the ages of 18 and 29 who have cast ballots early has surpassed turnout levels from the last midterm election in just about every state, according to several sources tracking early vote totals.”