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2018 - Elections and Trends


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Michael Bloomberg’s political action committee has launched a major ad campaign aimed at unseating Republican Reps. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa and Steve Knight of Palmdale.

The intervention by the former New York City mayor has further tilted California ad spending in Democrats’ favor in the final two weeks before the Nov. 6 midterm election.

 
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Bloomberg’s Independence USA PAC reported spending $4.4 million on advertising against Rohrabacher and $5.1 million to promote Knight’s Democratic challenger, Katie Hill.

It is part of the PAC’s expected $11-million final push for Democrats in tight House races in California, with a small amount going to Mike Levin, who is vying to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista.

 

“That’s a jaw-dropping amount of money,” said Rob Stutzman, one of California’s top Republican strategists.

Bloomberg’s spending underscored California’s pivotal role in deciding which party will control the House for the second half of President Trump’s term.

Democrats, who need to gain 23 seats to win the majority, have targeted Rohrabacher, Knight, and Reps. Mimi Walters of Laguna Beach and Jeff Denham of the San Joaquin Valley. They also hope to capture the open seats of Issa and departing GOP Rep. Ed Royce of Fullerton.

The unpopularity of Trump, who lost all six districts in 2016, has put every one of those seats in play for Democrats.

The closing burst of advertising from Bloomberg was a reminder that Hill, despite her spectacular success in fundraising, still faces a tough fight to dislodge Knight in conservative-leaning suburbs on the northern outskirts of Los Angeles. Bloomberg’s first TV ad for Hill casts her as a champion for veterans in the state’s 25th Congressional District.

Katie Hill, a Democrat, is challenging the reelection of Republican Rep. Steve Knight of Palmdale.
Katie Hill, a Democrat, is challenging the reelection of Republican Rep. Steve Knight of Palmdale. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

The other spot that Bloomberg started airing this week is a brutal attack on Rohrabacher, hammering him for saying that global warming is a fraud.

“It’s getting hotter, but while fire and smoke choke our air, Dana Rohrabacher is radically opposed to efforts to fight climate change,” a narrator says as images of forest fires and belching smokestacks flash on screen.

A League of Conservation Voters committee has joined Bloomberg in spending $650,000 to air the ad.

Rohrabacher spokesman Dale Neugebauer said the congressman believes the climate is changing, but not that human activity is the cause.

“Billionaires from San Francisco and New York City are pouring millions of dollars into this district to buy the election for Nancy Pelosi and advance their own personal agendas,” Neugebauer said. “Their attack ads are intended [to] mislead and to distort Rep. Rohrabacher’s record. It won’t work.”

Scientists say carbon emissions, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, are rapidly warming the Earth and threatening civilization with inundation of coastal cities, food shortages, die-offs of coral reefs, more frequent and intense hurricanes and wildfires and other catastrophes.

Howard Wolfson, a Bloomberg senior advisor, called the congressman’s stand on climate change extreme.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) received $3 million in cable TV ads from a super PAC closely tied to House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) received $3 million in cable TV ads from a super PAC closely tied to House Speaker Paul Ryan. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“There are many Republicans who vote against the environment, but there are not many who are willing to say so explicitly on the record that they believe that climate change is a hoax,” he said. “That kind of thing is really out of step with the district.”

Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 10 percentage points in Rohrabacher’s 48th Congressional District on the Orange County coast, stretching from Seal Beach to South Laguna. But Hillary Clinton beat Trump there in 2016, 48% to 46%.

The new attack ad is a worrisome sign for the 15-term incumbent, whose lackluster fundraising has left him unable to respond forcefully to his Democratic challenger, Harley Rouda, and his allies.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely tied to House Speaker Paul Ryan, has come to the rescue, up to a point, with $3 million in cable television ads, but left Rohrabacher to fend for himself on the more expensive broadcast stations with broader audiences.

On Thursday, Rouda, the Bloomberg group and a Democratic super PAC were all airing ads pounding Rohrabacher on ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox stations with no counter-spots defending the congressman.

“That’s a real disadvantage for Rohrabacher to not get up on broadcast,” said Stutzman, the Republican strategist.

At the same time, he said, Bloomberg’s late arrival in California could diminish the impact, because the sheer volume of campaign advertising in the days just before an election can be too much for viewers to absorb.

All three of the other Republicans in close races in the L.A. media market — Knight, Walters and Young Kim of Fullerton — are getting help on broadcast stations from the Congressional Leadership Fund or the National Republican Congressional Committee. Like Rohrabacher, they badly need assistance to withstand the Democrats’ record spending.

Courtney Alexander, communications director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, declined to say why the group was limiting its defense of Rohrabacher to cable channels with fewer viewers than the main broadcast stations.

“We will do what it takes to ensure he wins his reelection,” she said.

Knight, who also can’t afford to advertise on the most-watched stations, said he was grateful the Congressional Leadership Fund was stepping into the void.

“They got us on broadcast,” he said of the GOP super PAC. “Being on broadcast is a big deal.”

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20 minutes ago, JimmyJames said:

That plaque is a disgrace. Way worse than some statue of some confederate soldier because it explicitly advocates an outright lie. 

No no no you have been brainwashed by liberals. It was about state's rights. 10th Amendment. And...fuck it. 

I can't even snark it any longer. 

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4 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

No no no you have been brainwashed by liberals. It was about state's rights. 10th Amendment. And...fuck it. 

I can't even snark it any longer. 

And to top it off its poorly written. Like some moron was assigned a job at the last minute to write a plaque to somehow justify the confederacy. The fact that the most important point of the whole thing is in parentheses is ridiculous. A middle schooler who wasn’t a mouthbreathing moron could write a better plaque.  

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Guess we should ignore the third paragraph of the Declaration of Causes that was passed by Texas back in 1861, because clearly they didn't understand that the upcoming war was about states rights, and not about slavery.

Quote

The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former as one of the co-equal States thereof,

The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated States to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility [sic] and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

Those fucking idiots running Texas back in 1861 clearly did not understand what the upcoming war was about.

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Oh it's well documented if you care to look. The whole state's rights argument is whitewashing the darkness of our history. I'm not going to derail it again. 

I did that already this week. 

Vote you mfers. 

Edit: I know I am preaching to the choir with that last sentence. Perhaps I should have said give more. I don't know what or how. That's on you. I am seriously considering going to walk with a man I didn't vote for in the primary. Because that's what required. 

Edited by cactusflinthead
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2 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

lmao 

 

 

I guess a +7.7 lead is a toss-up, but in the same way Beto has not led a poll in months in Texas, Hugin has not led a single poll in the entirety of the RCP database going back to March.  Both have about the same odds of winning, I'd wager.

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1 minute ago, Fozzz said:

I guess they think there might be some backlash at the polls against the obviously corrupt machine politician.  It will be pretty comical if supporting Menendez ends up blowing up in the Dems' faces.  It would be deserved. 

I've said on Earth 2, Menendez is probably already off the ballot and the replacement is losing while the GOP is on its way to 62 seats under President Hillary.

On Earth 1, he squeaks by. 

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39 minutes ago, Js1 said:

I guess a +7.7 lead is a toss-up, but in the same way Beto has not led a poll in months in Texas, Hugin has not led a single poll in the entirety of the RCP database going back to March.  Both have about the same odds of winning, I'd wager.

Beto has a lot of voters enthusiastic about him, working on GOTV, etc.  Menendez, at best, has voters who are apathetic about him, and most of his own voters despise him and don't think he belongs on the ballot.  

Menendez may get dragged across the finish line by the multiple competitive/potential flips House races in NJ. But, I've been saying for months that I thought NJ was a tossup and Menendez could well lose.

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From a statistical standpoint, the races are the same:  Both Cruz and Menedez have single digit leads outside the margin of error, albeit NJ isn't as well polled.  You can come up with all the horse race analysis you want, but like the sabermetrics of bunting:  The math is indisputable.

3 minutes ago, lemonlime said:

Beto has a lot of voters enthusiastic about him, working on GOTV, etc.  Menendez, at best, has voters who are apathetic about him, and most of his own voters despise him and don't think he belongs on the ballot.  

Menendez may get dragged across the finish line by the multiple competitive/potential flips House races in NJ. But, I've been saying for months that I thought NJ was a tossup and Menendez could well lose.

Yeah, the GOP got the White House and the Supreme Court and gave away Earth 2, where a Clinton presidency sets them up for a possible filibuster proof majority in 2021 that allows them to complete erase the Great Society and the New Deal.

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7 minutes ago, lemonlime said:

Beto has a lot of voters enthusiastic about him, working on GOTV, etc.  Menendez, at best, has voters who are apathetic about him, and most of his own voters despise him and don't think he belongs on the ballot.  

Menendez may get dragged across the finish line by the multiple competitive/potential flips House races in NJ. But, I've been saying for months that I thought NJ was a tossup and Menendez could well lose.

The problem is the fundamentals of the race.

Menendez is going to hold on because he comes from a position of strength (reliably blue state in a D-friendly environment and an incumbent)

Beto is playing from behind and it's only "close" because Ted sucks and it's a Democrat-friendly year

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6 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

From a statistical standpoint, the races are the same:  Both Cruz and Menedez have single digit leads outside the margin of error, albeit NJ isn't as well polled.  You can come up with all the horse race analysis you want, but like the sabermetrics of bunting:  The math is indisputable.

Yep, by the end of Election Day, both Cruz and Menendez will have won, albeit both will be extremely unimpressive results (+6/7) given their states' partisan lean and their incumbency.  End of story.

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1 minute ago, Js1 said:

The problem is the fundamentals of the race.

Menendez is going to hold on because he comes from a position of strength (reliably blue state in a D-friendly environment and an incumbent)

Beto is playing from behind and it's only "close" because Ted sucks and it's a Democrat-friendly year

Maybe.  I have trouble seeing these poll numbers for Menendez holding up.  Hell, because of the gerrymander, while I live a few blocks from a competitive district that could well flip, and has been getting a lot of attention, my own Democratic congressman is running essentially unopposed, and is a legacy who essentially took over the seat from his father.  That congressman always gets around 90% of the vote, and is in the bluest district in the  state, the part of the state Menendez needs to get people to vote from.  Meanwhile, a few blocks over it's competitive and those are the people who are going to turn out to the polls, including the large portion who are Republicans.

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Weakness by a single corrupt incumbent doesn't mean much by itself.  But it's part of a larger pattern.  The DCCC is putting money back into races they thought they'd sewed up months ago like VA-10.  Individual Senate races where there is high-frequency polling showing a trend to the Republicans in many cases: NV, AZ, MO, TX and TN in particular.  The Democrats are sending the biggest gun, the former president to campaign in places like Detroit and Milwaukee.  That tells me they are very concerned about the statewide races in those states - presumably the Senate contests.  Behavior of the players at the table means a lot more to me than any opinion survey.

Lastly the actual early votes are trending very strongly against the Democrats.  In 2016, they won the EV of NV by building an 82k vote margin in Clark Co (Vegas).  Not happening this time.  In 2016 at this point D-affiliated voters had an 18k vote margin over R-affiliated statewide.  This year that advantage is 3,243 votes 5 days into early voting.  In TN there is massive turnout in the eastern part of the state.  Knox Co is 4% below 2016 at the same point.  Shelby Co is home to Memphis, the sole Democrat stronghold in the state and 20% below 2016 turnout.  Keep in mind that with 2016 turnout numbers, Trump won TN by 25 points.  With the current skew, Bredesen has to win all independents and 35% of Republicans to capture the senate seat.

In FL, combined early voting shows almost 60k advantage for R over D-affiliated voters.  That's without results from two dozen counties, largely in the Panhandle.  Close elections in FL have usually featured Republicans voting early by mail, more than offset by Dems voting early in person.  Then Reps turning out more heavily on election day to produce the tight races.  This year, the mail-in votes has gone as per usual but the in-person early vote is tied - despite being skewed to S and C FL by the hurricane.  I expect the final walk-in early vote to also skew GOP this year once those counties start voting (today) and reporting.  Even without that, the trends put the Democrats 5-6 points behind their pace from 2016.

When choosing between opinions and actual data, I'll take the data every time.  Especially now that the opinions are drawn from less than 2% of the people that the surveyors attempt to contact.

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23 minutes ago, Js1 said:

That's a lot of doom and gloom from like 5-7 days of early voting.

In the last mid-term FL cast less than 6 million ballots.  In the presidential there were 9.4 million votes.  2.04 million have voted so far this cycle.  That is 22% of the 2016 electorate and 35% of the 2014 electorate.  263k have voted in Nevada.  That compares to 1,125k in 2016 and 547k in 2014.  Those numbers are big enough to be meaningful. 

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18 minutes ago, Bateshorn said:

Dude, your NV numbers are all over the place and wrong.  Jon Ralston’s latest blog post just went up.  Looking like it’s going to be nip and tuck in NV.  

Also, never compare midterms and presidential years .  It’s apples and oranges. 

Here's what it boils down..... It's going to be a nail biter.

 
Also.... trying to compare it to a Presidential cycle seems folly.
Edited by Patrick Bateman
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I like that he models it as well:

Quote

—If Heller and Rosen are holding 90 percent of their bases and getting 5 percent of the other’s and each are getting 45 percent of indies: Rosen is ahead by 3,000 votes, or 1.3 percent.

—-If they are at 90-5 with the bases and Heller is ahead by 50-45 with indies: He is losing by 850 votes, or .4 percent

—-If they are at 90-5 with the bases and Rosen is ahead by 50-45 with indies: She is ahead by 5,000 votes, or 2.2 percent

—-If they are at 90-5 with the bases and Heller is ahead by 50-40 with indies: He is ahead by 1,300 votes, or .6 percent

—-If they are at 90-5 with the bases and Rosen is ahead by 50-40 with indies: She is ahead by 7,000 votes, or 3.1 percent

But a lot of his modeling is based on the NYT/Siena poll crosstabs.  So really, it's quite confusing if you have no idea how the Latino/indie/women vote is going to go.

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That’s the great unknown in NV: how the unregistered will break. And I think that’s true nationwide.  If the indies/unregistered break together, then you could see a wave/Democrat disappoint (Nate Sliver gamed these two scenarios out earlier in the week).  

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1 hour ago, Bateshorn said:

Dude, your NV numbers are all over the place and wrong.  Jon Ralston’s latest blog post just went up.  Looking like it’s going to be nip and tuck in NV.  

Also, never compare midterms and presidential years .  It’s apples and oranges. 

Did you not notice that I gave turnout numbers for BOTH 2014 and 2016?

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Also 2014 featured a gubernatorial election at the top of the ballot where the Republican won 71% to 24%.  I think it would be kinda crazy to model a tight 2018 senate race on that outcome.  The structure of the close 2018 race looks more like the 2016 election than the 2014 election in Nevada.  If you want to do an analysis comparing it to 2014, please feel free.  Until then I will work with the closest comp I've got.  I'm just not sure you can draw useful conclusions from comparing a GOP wave election to this year. 

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So much passion, time, and money thrown behind Beto tilting at his windmill and there's no credible challenge at all to Patrick.  It's kind of sad.
Early in the race the two were tied in polls. Goeb's GOP primary opponent got a quarter of the vote and immediately endorsed Collier. He is also a candidate that theoretically should appeal to moderates and traditional Rs who are turned off by the Texas GOP's fuckery.

Huge missed opportunity for Ds. Goeb was the easiest candidate to unseat. As weird as it is that there are Beto-Abbot voters (there have been enough polls too prove they exist in some number), that poll would indicate there are even more Beto-Goeb voters. That seems off. If that Lt Gov poll is accurate, I think Beto loses bigly. More likely IMO that guys like Nelson and Collier track the Beto numbers.

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