Continued from another threadSeriously all these special elections have been in safe Republican strongholds. It's disappointing that we lost but to come so close? Dude that's amazing.
Ironbite-+20 districts almost falling does not bold good fortunes for the +6 districts they'll have to defend come 2018.
I point you to the recent special election for New York's State Assembly, where a district that went +23 for Trump and +37 for the Republican candidate in 2016 went to a Sanders delegate in said special election by 16. These districts could have been flipped.
(And note that New York Republicans these days are not the John Lindsay/Jacob Javits/Nelson Rockefeller-style Republicans of decades past; they are firmly Trump/Tea Party-brand Republicans.)
I'm about to drop some knowledge on this thread. Ossoff could have won GA-6, but not by being more BernieBro. The reason for this is multifaceted, and well, speculative (we are discussing counterfactuals, after all).
Let's break down why so much attention was put on Georgia-6. To understand what happened, one must understand a brief history. Georgia-6 was heavily gerrymandered following the 2010 Mid-Term election. The district was drawn to include a lot of white people with college degrees (56% of people in the district have a college degree). However, white people with a college degree are, on average, less conservative than white people without a college degree, so you need more of them to get the same reliably Republican district. Because of this, the district was drawn so as to include fewer racial minorities (13.4% black and 13.4% Hispanic).
Now, the reason people focused on GA-6 was because it was relatively favorable to Clinton for a Republican district. While the national popular vote was +2% for Clinton, GA-6 was only -6. So, by this measure, you could say that GA-6 was 8 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole. However, we all know that Trump
lost white educated voters vis-a-vis Romney. While Hillary lost GA-6 by only 6% points, Tom Price (R) won the district by 23.5%, indicating that while the district had soured on Trump, generic Congressional Republicans still held considerable clout. Typically, when evaluating the sway of a district, pollsters rely on presidential results due to the fact that (1) the president is the only office which is nationally elected and (2) the president is a singular person, as opposed to 435 representatives who may be good candidates or terrible candidates.* While typically accurate, this district is a bit of an anomaly because while reliably republican, it really wasn't too keen on Trump due to its demographics. If one were to only look at the districts, the GOP won SC-5 by 20.5 (incumbent) and GA-6 by 23.5 (also incumbent). Incumbency typically adds about 3 percent, so reduce that to 17.5 and 20.5. Thus, both of yesterdays races continued the 15% democratic swing that we've seen in Congressional special elections this year.
Which brings me to how Ossoff could have won. Realistically, it would be very difficult no matter what he did being in such a red district. Nevertheless, based on opinion polling and the area, his best bet would probably be to tie Handel to Trump (remember, the district doesn't like him) and Trumpcare (22% favorability nationwide, as well as a bungled mess of incompetence). He would also benefit from a reduced turnout as that would leave dissatisfied and indifferent Republicans at home, while bringing out fired up democrats angry with Trump.** Essentially, the district has more Republicans than Democrats, so if more people vote, odds are that more of those people are Republicans. If Ossoff were more of a BernieBro, it would bring out the democratic base, but likely at the expense of Republican voters' indifference (which he needs to keep them at home). Additionally, GA-6 isn't swayed by populism: Trump's right-wing populism didn't convince the district, nor did Bernie's left-wing populism as it went to Hillary by 60-40%. A moderate democrat that is competent (in contrast to Trump) and flies under the radar was the best bet Democrats had, and Ossoff goofed by raising and spending so much money, which caused the GOP and Republican PACs to spend money, and all the attention fired up Republican voters and brought them out.
Which brings me to my conclusion:
So that bitch Handel won - repulsive Republican idiot running a little haven for inbreds and morons.
I'd rant about this, but it would just lead to another flaming contest between Queen and myself.
I don't pick on you cause Bernie. I pick on you because you obviously have pre-determined narratives that you push forward without critical thought, conveniently ignoring anomalies to your hypothesis. Very often, your position is "Bernie good, moderate dems bad, more Bernie-style dems would always win." I don't dispute that Bernie-style dems can win many districts, such as
Wisconsin-1 (90% white, 25% of people with a college degree, voted for Bernie over Hillary by 55-45, and considerably less Republican than GA-6 or SC-5). I pick on you because very often your pre-determined narrative does not hold up to scrutiny (ex. New York's 9th State District below) or are unnecessarily vitriolic to non-Bernie-style-dems ("where no chairs were thrown"). By all means, be political. But when your pre-determined narrative is obvious, I cringe, roll my eyes, and make light of it.
*While Trump was a bad candidate, in the sense that he had no morals and enough scandals to keep Oliver Pope busy until retirement, he isn't the kind of "bad candidate" that is meant. Typically, a "bad candidate" refers to the vote share, and while Trump lost some groups (college educated whites and women), he gained others (uneducated whites and men). "Bad candidates" typically refer to vote share, and while Trump lost some groups vis-a-vis Romney (such as whites with a college degree), he made considerable gains among other groups (such as whites without a college degree).
**Reduced turnout also helped the democrats in the NY state race you mentioned. NY-9 (state) and GA-6 turned out 60,000 and 326,000 people in November 2016, respectively, while their special elections had 4,000 (6.66%) and 260,000 (80%) people, respectively. Demographically, the two are similar, with GA-6 being slightly more educated. Nevertheless, the difference maker for NY-9 was that demoralized and indifferent republicans stayed home, while fired up democrats voted.
