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2018 mid-term election

Molinaro said:
The Democrats have so far picked up +38 seats in the House. There are just two left still being counted. Democrats now have the lead in both.

I seem to recall posts in the first few days after the election by Republican supporters saying words to the effect that they didn't know why Democrats were so happy. They didn't even get the +40 Blue Wave that so many were predicting.
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Oh, our liberal tears....
 
kookbreaker said:
Oh, our liberal tears....
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See, that's the odd thing. You don't have to make confident predictions. When you do, you just might be wrong, and then you skulk off for a while to avoid any remonstrations.

I totally don't get it. Maybe Slings would've turned out right, but maybe not. Turns out not. But he never had to pretend to know what he didn't, that is, the outcome of the midterms.

(We see similar behavior in the bitcoin thread, on both sides. )
 
CNN is reporting that the Dems picked up another seat in New Mexico, bringing the total seats gained to 39.

Xochitl Torres Small beat Republican Yvette Herrell after Harrell declared victory on election night.
 
bonzombiekitty said:
CNN is reporting that the Dems picked up another seat in New Mexico, bringing the total seats gained to 39.

Xochitl Torres Small beat Republican Yvette Herrell after Harrell declared victory on election night.
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Trump did well for the Dems in 2018, but I doubt he will be able to repeat the performance in 2020.
 
I'm hearing more about these interesting "centrists":

Before saying that its opposition to Nancy Pelosi’s House speaker campaign had nothing to do with her record, the nonpartisan group No Labels was exploring a primary challenge to her back home in San Francisco.

And she wasn’t the only Democrat the centrist nonprofit wanted to go after.

No Labels bills itself as “a movement for the tens of millions of Americans who are fed up with the dysfunction and will no longer put up with a government that does not represent the interests of most Americans.” Among the group’s past co-chairs are the former Republican presidential candidate and current ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman and the former Democratic and independent Senator Joe Lieberman, who oversaw the presentation of No Labels’ “problem solver’s award” to Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican primaries.

The nonprofit’s super pac supports the Problem Solvers Caucus, which has 44 equally divided Democratic and Republican members in the House and purports to be working on real solutions to issues that divide Congress.

But over the past year, No Labels’ leaders considered primary challenges to at least three incumbent House Democrats—starting with Pelosi, in January 2017. They also discussed running a primary challenge to freshman Darren Soto, a Florida Democrat. He had been elected with No Labels’ support but had in early 2017 accepted a mostly honorific position as an assistant whip for the House Democrats.

Now Soto is one of the nine Democrats from the Problem Solvers Caucus who is among the holdouts in Pelosi’s bid to win another term as speaker. Those nine currently have considerable influence as she works to reach the number of votes she needs to be elected speaker. Soto and his fellow Democrats in the caucus announced last week that they would not support Pelosi unless she agreed to rule changes that they argue would “break the gridlock.” Pelosi is scheduled to meet with its members on Tuesday, though she preempted the conversation by having an aide put out a statement arguing that she’s already agreed to many of their proposals and gone further.

The Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus made no such demands on Paul Ryan before supporting him in his bid for speaker last year. Members of the Problem Solvers from both parties meet regularly and met with Trump at the White House last September. So far, they have not produced any workable legislative solution on any issue.
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Linky.

They are a bipartisan group that only works against Democrats and doesn't actually solve any problems.
 
GOP's Chrissy Hyde=Smith has won over Democratic challenger Mike Epsy in a run-off election in Mississippi, officially ending the last race of the 2018 mid-term.

The final "scores" as it where:

The Democrats gained 40 seats and the majority in the House.
The GOP gained 2 seats and strengthened their majority in the Senate.
Democrats got a net gain of 13 Governorships.
 
JoeMorgue said:
GOP's Chrissy Hyde=Smith has won over Democratic challenger Mike Epsy in a run-off election in Mississippi, officially ending the last race of the 2018 mid-term.

The final "scores" as it where:

The Democrats gained 40 seats and the majority in the House.
The GOP gained 2 seats and strengthened their majority in the Senate.
Democrats got a net gain of 13 Governorships.
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A "win" for Trump :D
 
JoeMorgue said:
GOP's Chrissy Hyde=Smith has won over Democratic challenger Mike Epsy in a run-off election in Mississippi, officially ending the last race of the 2018 mid-term.

The final "scores" as it where:

The Democrats gained 40 seats and the majority in the House.
The GOP gained 2 seats and strengthened their majority in the Senate.
Democrats got a net gain of 13 Governorships.
Click to expand...

So, massive win for Trump and massive losses for the Democrats.
 
JoeMorgue said:
GOP's Chrissy Hyde=Smith has won over Democratic challenger Mike Epsy in a run-off election in Mississippi, officially ending the last race of the 2018 mid-term.

The final "scores" as it where:

The Democrats gained 40 seats and the majority in the House.
The GOP gained 2 seats and strengthened their majority in the Senate.
Democrats got a net gain of 13 Governorships.
Click to expand...

Before the election many of us were curious as to how close the polling/predicting might turn out to be. I was following 538 due to them being one of the most accurate predictors of the 2016 election (538 was off in 2016, but not as much as most others).

They were pretty close this time around.

Background: 538 uses three different models that tend to put out slightly different results. They show their results as probabilities, their "predictions" are the results they show as being the most probable.

So for the House, they showed the most probable results as being that the Dems would pick up 38, 39, or 36 seats (lite, classic, deluxe probability models), with an 85% probability that the Dems would pick up enough seats to gain control of the house. So the Dems in the house did better than what 538 considered to be most probable, but it was still pretty close.

In the Senate, 538 showed the most probable outlooks as the Republicans picking up 0.7, 0.5, and 0.5 seats - somewhat problematic in that there is no such thing as half a Senate seat. At any rate, the GOP pick up of two seats outperformed 538's most likely probability model by one or one and a half seats. 538 gave the Republican party an 82% chance of retaining control of the Senate. Smaller sample size, for whatever that is worth.

538 Predicted that among governorships, the Dems would most likely end up with 24 to 25 governorships, depending on the model. That would leave about 199 million people living in States with Dem governors, and 130 million in states with Republican governors. The results there were 27 states with Republican governors and 23 with Democratic governors. So the Republicans outperformed and the Dems under-performed relative to 538's most like forecast, with 538 being off by one or two states depending on the model.

So the polling was imperfect as always, but still fairly close. Certainly accurate as far as the overall trend of Dem's flipping Republican held seats.
 
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crescent said:
Before the election many of us were curious as to how close the polling/predicting might turn out to be. I was following 538 due to them being one of the most accurate predictors of the 2016 election (538 was off in 2016, but not as much as most others).

They were pretty close this time around.

Background: 538 uses three different models that tend to put out slightly different results. They show their results as probabilities, their "predictions" are the results they show as being the most probable.

So for the House, they showed the most probable results as being that the Dems would pick up 38, 39, or 36 seats (lite, classic, deluxe probability models), with an 85% probability that the Dems would pick up enough seats to gain control of the house. So the Dems in the house did better than what 538 considered to be most probable, but it was still pretty close.

In the Senate, 538 showed the most probable outlooks as the Republicans picking up 0.7, 0.5, and 0.5 seats - somewhat problematic in that there is no such thing as half a Senate seat. At any rate, the GOP pick up of two seats outperformed 538's most likely probability model by one or one and a half seats. 538 gave the Republican party an 82% chance of retaining control of the Senate. Smaller sample size, for whatever that is worth.

538 Predicted that among governorships, the Dems would most likely end up with 24 to 25 governorships, depending on the model. That would leave about 199 million people living in States with Dem governors, and 130 million in states with Republican governors. The results there were 27 states with Republican governors and 23 with Democratic governors. So the Republicans outperformed and the Dems under-performed relative to 538's most like forecast, with 538 being off by one or two states depending on the model.

So the polling was imperfect as always, but still fairly close. Certainly accurate as far as the overall trend of Dem's flipping Republican held seats.
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Even more telling than the victories the Dems managed is how narrow the losses were. Races which should have been walk-aways for the GOP were neck-and-neck. All across the 'red' states.
 
crescent said:
Before the election many of us were curious as to how close the polling/predicting might turn out to be. I was following 538 due to them being one of the most accurate predictors of the 2016 election (538 was off in 2016, but not as much as most others).

They were pretty close this time around.

Background: 538 uses three different models that tend to put out slightly different results. They show their results as probabilities, their "predictions" are the results they show as being the most probable.

So for the House, they showed the most probable results as being that the Dems would pick up 38, 39, or 36 seats (lite, classic, deluxe probability models), with an 85% probability that the Dems would pick up enough seats to gain control of the house. So the Dems in the house did better than what 538 considered to be most probable, but it was still pretty close.

In the Senate, 538 showed the most probable outlooks as the Republicans picking up 0.7, 0.5, and 0.5 seats - somewhat problematic in that there is no such thing as half a Senate seat. At any rate, the GOP pick up of two seats outperformed 538's most likely probability model by one or one and a half seats. 538 gave the Republican party an 82% chance of retaining control of the Senate. Smaller sample size, for whatever that is worth.

538 Predicted that among governorships, the Dems would most likely end up with 24 to 25 governorships, depending on the model. That would leave about 199 million people living in States with Dem governors, and 130 million in states with Republican governors. The results there were 27 states with Republican governors and 23 with Democratic governors. So the Republicans outperformed and the Dems under-performed relative to 538's most like forecast, with 538 being off by one or two states depending on the model.

So the polling was imperfect as always, but still fairly close. Certainly accurate as far as the overall trend of Dem's flipping Republican held seats.
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Reflecting on this from a different angle (and who ISN'T looking for entrails to help figure out 2020) and my own idiosyncratic viewpoint....

> The population of the country does come into play. With about 60% of the country in states with New Blue governors, it's an indicator. Not conclusive but an indicator.
> The House vote count is just as telling, if not more so. Congressional Districts largely parallel the EC districts. If all the Republicans in Iowa could hold was the Nunes/King dark red northwest quadrant, they've got some problems.
> Combine the two (millions more Dem votes for House and Governorships) and slightly more Dem votes for Senate, and Donald is going to have to invent 15 to 20 million illegal voters to justify his loss in 2020.

The maps of the country showing governorships and House seats have gone patchwork. You can see a pattern, still, but a lot of Flyover States don't listen to Jessie Watters evidently, as they voted for Dems. That endless red swath is getting broken up. You see a blue or bluing trail across from the West Coast to the Texas border. You see a goodly amount of farm/agrarian areas going to Dems.

If we believe, along with our president, that this is off-year and the bad performance is because he wasn't on the ballot, try a slightly different outlook. This many (record numbers) turned out in an off-year when the number one issue in exit polls was Trump. How many more will turn out in 2020?

The drip-drip-drip torture is getting to the American public, I think. One unhinged tweet a week might be hand-waved away.... if the yutz was doing something else for them. But his trade policies are causing them jobs, his tax cut has all been frittered away, and his rampant bigotry gets more unpalatable every day.

Dem governors cannot win out on everything against GOP state legislatures. But they can veto onerous attempts at jerry-rigging election days. When one of those not-bigoted-at-all state legislators proposes to extend voting hours in Muslim/Jewish neighborhood by opening a new polling station at Pistol Pete's Pork Palace on Route Seven by the Safeway, he can at least block it.


Oh, and the +2 in the Senate? It's really a minus one. The Dem Most Likely to Vote With the Prez caucus is now shy three members. The net gain for the GOP is meaningless, other than the fact that it makes legislation House-Proof. They were expected to barely hold the Senate and they did.
 
Shalamar said:
That cannot be true. It reads like an Onion article.

Edit: Good. it was Satire.
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Yes, that was why I used the term, "cutting" rather than shocking.



I associate The New Yorker with famous wits like James Thurber and Dorothy Parker.
 
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quadraginta said:
Even more telling than the victories the Dems managed is how narrow the losses were. Races which should have been walk-aways for the GOP were neck-and-neck. All across the 'red' states.
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Indeed. Locally, the Beto/Cruz race should not have required a presidential visit to pull it out in the end.

And an openly gay woman was only 10 points off taking a seat that has always been very conservative. I never considered that she had a real chance and seeing the actual numbers was a bit shocking. Not close, but far closer than I would have expected, and far closer than the GOP can feel good about.
 
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