Thursday, August 09, 2018

Keep Pluckin' that Chicken!

Hmmm...yeah, about that:

The race is extremely close in Ohio's 12th Congressional District, where Democrat Danny O'Connor is facing off against Republican state Senator Troy Balderson. The winner will take over the term of Pat Tiberi, who resigned to work for a business group earlier this year.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Balderson has 50.1 percent of the vote, to O'Connor's 49.3 percent. The vote may come down to counting provisional and absentee ballots -- but that could take days. County boards of elections reported that 3,435 provisional ballots were cast and there were 5,048 outstanding absentee ballots. State law dictates election officials cannot begin counting these ballots until the 11th day after the election, which would be Aug. 18.

Balderson appeared to claim victory, saying in a statement, "THANK YOU #OH12! I am honored for the opportunity to represent Ohio's 12th Congressional District. I will work relentlessly for everyone in this district. Congratulations to Danny O'Connor on running a hard-fought race."
.....

If the vote margin is ultimately within half a point, an automatic recount would be triggered.

So not yet 8 out of 9; and besides, it was a "special election."  The number of votes cast was just over 200,000, and both candidates face another vote in November, when turnout will be larger.  Does that matter?  Probably:

While the loss will doubtlessly disappoint Democrats, it was still just a 1 percentage-point Republican win in a district with an R+14 partisan lean. That’s a Democratic overperformance of 13 points — not too far off the average Democratic overperformance (16 points) in federal special elections going into this week.

Besides, sometimes a miss is as good as a win:

And Five Thirty-Eight shows a Democratic swing (from 3 points to 31 points) in every special election since April 4, 2017, which is a fine augury for a blue wave in November, when people expect to turn out and vote.  And down in Texas, Cruz is so worried about Beto (who is now within 1 point of Cruz in polling), he's asking Trump to come campaign for him.  Maybe it'll help; Trump is the only person in D.C. more obnoxious than Cruz.  The contrast might do Cruz some good.

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