Special Election: Arizona's 8th District might flip

Oopsie-doodle!

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Any shot for Democrats tomorrow? I'm hoping!

An Emerson poll out today has the republican up 6

But, hell, it's just a state seat.

Or is it a US House seat?

I admit to being confused.

Well, I will keep my eyes peeled for this race tomorrow. What does Poll Troll say?

It's a Congressional election, not a state house election. 538 thinks it is unlikely the Dems will be able to win it, but we will see.

[quote]What does Poll Troll say?

R6, I haven't been following this race as closely as some of the others, but I think 538 is probably right that it will be tough for the Democrats to win it.

As pointed out at the link, although the polls are showing a close race, it's a suburb of Phoenix that normally goes Republican by double digits, and hasn't voted Democratic since the early 1980's.

It will be harder to pull off an upset in Arizona than it was in Pennsylvania.

However, if the Democratic candidate can keep the race closer than usual, it will still be a positive sign.

Well, here's to hoping it's at least close!

NYT results page.

[quote]Polls close at 10 p.m. Eastern, and first results are expected around 11 p.m. There will be no live forecast tonight. It's not as useful in races like this one, where most of the vote is cast by mail.

The Republican has won the district tonight by about 5 or 6 points.

But this is a district Donald Trump won by over 20 points in 2016.

So it was a decent result for the Democrats.

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Debbie Lesko (Republican) 52.9%

Hiral Tipirneni (Democrat) 47.1%

Further proof that Arizona is filled with the worst trash in the nation.

Fucking Alabama could elect a Democrat into office, and they can't?

The Republican won, yes, but with a much smaller margin than it should have been.

Harry Enten says tonight's results are a warning for the GOP.

The results show the Democrats may be heading towards a wave in November similar to 2006:

[quote]There's just no excuse for the GOP here. Early/mail voting is so easy to do in AZ and GOP voted plenty here. Lesko raised/spent plenty. She wasn't scandal plagued. I mean the special election signal is obvious. It's actually *worse* for the GOP than 2006.

This was Gabby Giffords district. So it has voted Democratic, and very recently.

Look. Anyone who thinks this "Blue Wave" is going to magically sweep all the vermin out of office is sadly mistaken. It was easy to project that and see gains with a few isolated special cases. But now we are closer to the actual campaign season than we were with Alabama, etc., and the GOP is starting to fight back. They're running ads, yes, but they're also implementing their larger strategy and they have Trump with a lot of visual poses acting Presidential. So we're going to have to fight hard for every inch of ground we gain. We can't take anything for granted. I wish we had won this seat, but maybe it was a good wake up call for us. Maybe this will confirm that we have to fight harder and we definitely have to deal with the very real possibility of them trying to steal another election. ballot security i non existent. We have to keep the pressure on and raise hell. We have to be Relentless.

There was actually a big swing towards the Democrats in Arizona tonight.

Harry Enten's analysis:

[quote]Wanna know how weak Lesko winning by 6 would be? It's a *19* point swing off the partisan baseline in AZ-8 towards the Dems. The average swing in federal elections before tonight was 17 points.

The GOP suppressed the vote. 140k voting cards for new voters for the District were not mailed. Meaning 140k people were not sure if they were allowed to go vote and where they needed to go to vote. People are reporting they were either turned away or were not sure if they were part of the 8th district of Arizona.

This is a tactic that worked in other parts of the country to suppress the vote, and it has now come to Arizona.

r15 This was not Gabby Giffords district, stop spreading fake news.

Think about it. The Democratic nominee was leading the polls in the last days before the election. She went from trailing to being ahead by 1%.

[bold]Tipirneni lost the vote by 9k votes[/bold]. The Arizona voting commission forgot to inform [bold]140k[/bold] new voters (mostly first time voters) that they were eligible to vote in the 8th District. This last minute stunt from the GOP could have affected the outcome of the election.

Lesko (Republican) 52.8% t

Tipirneni (Democrat) t47.2%

r19, yes it was dumbass.

r21 I guess you're too stupid to know they changed district numbers after they redistricted. Gabby Giffords represented a Tucson based district.

This district is 90% white with a median age of 67. Basically old retirees from the Midwest. The fact that the Democrat lost by 6% is very encouraging. A more appealing candidate like Conor Lamb could have won this.

The Democrats have to work hard to make sure new voters can all the information they need. But a solid Republican district is now competitive,

This is not the same area as Gabby Giffords' district.

The area was redistricted.

Most of what is now the 8th District used to be in the 5th District.

Harry Enten:

[quote]Folks if this ain't a signal... I don't know what is.

[quote]It's just consistent and these districts don't look alike. We've seen the swing in the south, the rust belt, the southwest, the interior west, urban, rural, suburban, etc.

[quote]Anyone who thinks this "Blue Wave" is going to magically sweep all the vermin out of office is sadly mistaken.

In [bold]2016[/bold] the Republican won this House seat by netting 204,942 (68% ) votes.

In [bold]2018 [/bold] the Republican won this House seat by netting 82,294 (52%) votes.

This after 140k voters did not received their voting cards for the 2018 special election. In November this seat will be up for grabs again since Lesko only won the right to have the seat for the duration of Franks' term which ends January 2019.

This seat will be even more contested in 4 months, and you better believe the DNC will make sure voters know ahead of time where they are supposed to vote.

Nate Cohn:

[quote]It probably won't get covered this way, but this is arguably the worst special congressional election result yet for the GOP

[quote]There just aren't any excuses. The Republican wasn't Roy Moore. The Democrat wasn't Conor Lamb. The turnout wasn't low. The district doesn't have, say, a latent Democratic tradition. It oddly has the effect of making all the prior excuses seem less relevant, too.

Sadly, a loss is still a loss.

The pundits focus on the percentages. I look at the actual numbers. The last time a Democrat ran in this district was 2012. They got 95,000 votes. So far tonight, Tipirneni has 79,000. The Blue Wave is dependent on a huge amount of Republicans staying home on election day in November.

Ummm, you do realize that there is just a slight difference in turnout between national elections and random special elections, right r30?

The early vote was 50% republican, 28% independent the rest independent. I'm not sure this was all about republicans staying home, the democrat did well with independents.

The pundit analysis is founded on voters switching parties, but the Democrats didn't surpass their previous vote total in the district. Democrats do have the edge in motivation though.

^^28% democrat

[quote]Sadly, a loss is still a loss.

It's the percentage you dum dum. Which will only be growing for Democrats as new voters come in.

73.9% of the population in this District are white. 65% of the population are 60 or older.

All Minorities combined are barely 23% of the population (less than 1/4th of the total population). Yet, the Dems only lost by 6% points.

This was a fantastic result for the Dems, and speaks well about the midterm elections coming up.

How can they get away with fucking 140000 people's votes?There has to be some consequence, some costly penalty for doing that. I am fucking tired of working hard and having some nasty fuckers pull some shit like this and walk away with no penalty. There ought to be fines and jail time for officials who do this and the media spotlight ought to shine hot on them.

[quote]"There's a drag on the mid-terms for Republican candidates that's being created by the national narrative. And it would be very hard to buck that trend if you're in swing districts, much less close districts, if you can't change that narrative between now and November." A senior, unnamed Republican told CNN that the contest "was not supposed to be this close". "We really can't blame anything. We got killed among independents," the person said.

R37 Yes! It is so damn frustrating to have them pull crap like this to keep eligible voters from the polls. Those 140k people have to be ready for November. Folks in the district will have to step up and make sure they are registered and receive their cards on time.

Yes this is remarkable. Even the candidate herself recognized it was basically not going to happen despite one poll, but she correctly said this election was one strand of a larger narrative.

This year, we have t counter these fake images of Trump being "Presidential" with what Congress has failed to do. The corruption, the hypocrisy, the attempts to gut healthcare, the environment Scott Pruitt, the tax bill, etc. That's what the Dems have to do. Just tell the fucking truth. Don't let those bastards steal the narrative and define the ground on which this battle is fought. And have your ground game tight. and make sure there are local issues that get people to the polls. Politics is war. The battle has to be fought on many different levels. I always worry because too often I have seen Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Stop being purists and don't forget. The sabotage can be coming from inside the house, people. There are elements in all the state Democratic parties right now who a re working hard to push the state parties further to the left. We need to attract the independents. The GOP is deliberately looking for ways to internally divide the Dems at the state level. It is the only way they can pull out a few wins. Right now they are resigned to losing some seats, but feel that they might still hold on to the House and the Senate. That is what they will base their strategy on. They are wrong. We will show them just how wrong they are.

The key is an energetic turnout r41, the Dem voter base tends not to vote in Midterm elections. The Dems will be successful if they can get people to just show up and vote.

You're right R42. We all need to remember 2010. The GOP has done a lot of damage in 8 yrs. and the support they get from state governments can't be ignored either

It was a 20-point swing for a seat that shouldn't even have been close to being competitive. National Republican groups had to come in with a $1 million buy to help hang onto this district. In the polling that counts, at the ballot box, Democratic candidates are still outperforming their numbers by double digits.

And a state Democratic candidate easily won last night in a New York district that hasn't sent a Democrat to the legislature in 40 years, meaning that at the state level, Democrats have won 40 out of 44 such off-cycle elections, the majority in red districts.

Yes, we shouldn't be overconfident. Yes, Republicans will do everything they can to suppress the vote. Yes, Russian trolls will continue to proliferate unchecked. Yes, we need everyone to get out and vote. But also yes, the blue wave this year is still very real and still very much on track.

What the elections have looked like, consistent Democratic overperformance.

The Arizona Secretary of State who is in charge of elections, has done a very bad job during her term. She is being primaried in her own party, she’s that bad. There are also 2 Democrats running. She has fucked up in every election cycle.

The DNC needs to sue the gigantic fuck up pulled by the GOP which could have very well swayed the election. The Democrat lost by 9k votes. Those 140k unmailed voter cards probably shaved off thousands of votes from the Democratic candidate.