What to make of KS-04 special election results?

[Pens1566]

So, Estes (R) wins Pompeo's old seat in yesterday's special election. Looks to be in the neighborhood of a 4-5pt win in a district that Trump won by 27 and Pompeo won by 31. Excuses on both sides of baggage from a terrible governor and expending no DCC time/effort/money. Kansas.

Republicans should be concerned. GA-06 is coming up, and is likely to flip according to current projections.

 

[K1052]

That so called "safe districts" might not be and that moderate ones could be uphill battles for Republicans. This is just one special though, lets see how the others do before declaring a trend. Midterms will often favor the party out of power though.

I think the legislative implications will come sooner though if Rs think they need to run to the center or left to survive their next election. Not going to be a lot of appetite for gutting the ACA, Medicaid, Trump's skinny budget, etc amongst those congressmen. His entire agenda could be dead in the water.

 

[dullard]

There is a major benefit to gerrymandering districts and one possible weakness. The benefits are obvious: pack your opponents into a few districts where they win with ~90% of the vote and then leave many districts where you win with ~52% of the vote. That gives you many more house seats even with a minority of overall votes.

The one possible weakness is if there is an overall shift in public opinion. A bunch of house seats with a 52% win can very quickly become a 49% loss if the public opinion shifts even slightly towards your opponent.

As it is, there are just barely enough house seats (that the republicans won with with less than 55% of the vote) to make the difference between the house being controlled by democrats or republicans if there is a 5% shift in overall electoral turnout or opinion.

I think a ~30% win turning into a ~5% win should be a warning sign for Republicans. It is easy to armchair run the government where you get credit for bashing the other side but don't need to have any responsibility. It is much harder to actually run the government where your votes will dearly hurt different groups of people. But, one election isn't a trend. And it was an open seat which tends to help the opponent since the electorate isn't already in love with their current politician. Democrats will do far worse to assume this trend will continue than Republicans will do if they ignore this race. Apathy is the curse of democrats and assuming you will win gives Democrats a lot of apathy.

 

[theeedude]

20+ pt swing, not bad.
So called "terrible" governor is terrible not because of some scandal, but because he is actually implementing Republican policies, cutting taxes, cutting spending, and blocking Medicaid expansion.

 

[trenchfoot]

I'm wondering how Kansas' "Voter Rights" laws (if any) and the usual extreme gerrymandering of districts in many Repub controlled state gov'ts may have affected the outcome.

 

[thraashman]

20+ pt swing, not bad.
So called "terrible" governor is terrible not because of some scandal, but because he is actually implementing Republican policies, cutting taxes, cutting spending, and blocking Medicaid expansion.

He's implementing the Tea Party wet dream and it's proving as disastrous as anyone with a functioning brain knew it would.

Also, I live in Ga 6th District and gladly early voted for Jon Ossoff on Monday. It's funny seeing attack ads against him since they actually make me like him more.

 

[Blackjack200]

Midterms are not for another 18 months, I don't think it makes much sense to try to extrapolate this. What happens for the next year and a half will matter much more than whatever changed from November to now.

 

[Pens1566]

There is a major benefit to gerrymandering districts and one possible weakness. The benefits are obvious: pack your opponents into a few districts where they win with ~90% of the vote and then leave many districts where you win with ~52% of the vote. That gives you many more house seats even with a minority of overall votes.

The one possible weakness is if there is an overall shift in public opinion. A bunch of house seats with a 52% win can very quickly become a 49% loss if the public opinion shifts even slightly towards your opponent.

As it is, there are just barely enough house seats (that the republicans won with with less than 55% of the vote) to make the difference between the house being controlled by democrats or republicans if there is a 5% shift in overall electoral turnout or opinion.

I think a ~30% win turning into a ~5% win should be a warning sign for Republicans. It is easy to armchair run the government where you get credit for bashing the other side but don't need to have any responsibility. It is much harder to actually run the government where your votes will dearly hurt different groups of people. But, one election isn't a trend. And it was an open seat which tends to help the opponent since the electorate isn't already in love with their current politician. Democrats will do far worse to assume this trend will continue than Republicans will do if they ignore this race. Apathy is the curse of democrats and assuming you will win gives Democrats a lot of apathy.

Agree with most of this. Estes wasn't new to the voters though. He was already a state elected official (Treasurer). I saw something last night that there are in the neighborhood of 100 republican Reps in districts that won by less than 10%. That's a lot that could be in play if they actually work on it and go after them.

20+ pt swing, not bad.
So called "terrible" governor is terrible not because of some scandal, but because he is actually implementing Republican policies, cutting taxes, cutting spending, and blocking Medicaid expansion.

Well, yeah.

 

[Pens1566]

Midterms are not for another 18 months, I don't think it makes much sense to try to extrapolate this. What happens for the next year and a half will matter much more than whatever changed from November to now.

So these are largely referendums on the current POTUS. For that point to have any validity, you'd have to expect POTUS to change his current course. We're all still waiting for a pivot.

 

[dullard]

Agree with most of this. Estes wasn't new to the voters though. He was already a state elected official (Treasurer).

Point taken, but I don't think a lot of voters know who their treasurer is nor care about that position very much. Was Estes a strong name there?

 

[imported_tajmahal]

It was a special election that always has poor turnout, except for motivated political interests. The Republicans still won by about 7%. Even after all the leftist press said the district was up for grabs.

 

[Pens1566]

Point taken, but I don't think a lot of voters know who their treasurer is nor care about that position very much.

They might recognize the name from signs/etc. or just gravitate to the letter beside his name. Either way, I think that had little to do with the outcome overall.

 

[fskimospy]

It was a special election that always has poor turnout, except for motivated political interests. The Republicans still won by about 7%. Even after all the leftist press said the district was up for grabs.

The 'leftist press' (read: any press that's not conservative activist media) did not say it was up for grabs, they mentioned, correctly, that Republicans were suddenly worried enough about a normally super-safe district that they were expending significant time and resources there. Looks like the 'leftist press' was accurate yet again.

There's a lot of time until the midterms but if any Republican isn't seriously concerned about this result they are deluding themselves. A 20 point swing in a special election (which usually favor conservatives) is an enormous swing. It's also in line with the swing in another recent special election. If you see other upcoming special elections in the next few weeks and months following suit then warning bells should be going off left and right at GOP election HQ.

 

[brycejones]

I'm wondering how Kansas' "Voter Rights" laws (if any) and the usual extreme gerrymandering of districts in many Repub controlled state gov'ts may have affected the outcome.

I live in Kansas no gerrymandering required for the fourth. The district they gerrymandered to the GOP is the 3rd district which is currently held by Kevin Yoder. During the debate over the GOP's health plan he refused to take a position so I think he is feeling the heat at this point.

 

[woolfe9998]

The 'leftist press' (read: any press that's not conservative activist media) did not say it was up for grabs, they mentioned, correctly, that Republicans were suddenly worried enough about a normally super-safe district that they were expending significant time and resources there. Looks like the 'leftist press' was accurate yet again.

There's a lot of time until the midterms but if any Republican isn't seriously concerned about this result they are deluding themselves. A 20 point swing in a special election (which usually favor conservatives) is an enormous swing. It's also in line with the swing in another recent special election. If you see other upcoming special elections in the next few weeks and months following suit then warning bells should be going off left and right at GOP election HQ.

Indeed. It's also worth mentioning that the DNC gave no money to the dem candidate, while the RNC was worried and gave money to Estes. The swing from 30 to 7 with an under-funded dem candidate is pretty eye popping. It'll be interesting to see how Georgia 6 turns out. That's the one the "leftist press" has been saying is up for grabs. If it's a dem win, it's going to look bad for the GOP.

 

[Pens1566]

GA-6 is Gingrich's old district btw.

 

[trenchfoot]

Indeed. It's also worth mentioning that the DNC gave no money to the dem candidate, while the RNC was worried and gave money to Estes. The swing from 30 to 7 with an under-funded dem candidate is pretty eye popping. It'll be interesting to see how Georgia 6 turns out. That's the one the "leftist press" has been saying it up for grabs. If it's a dem win, it's going to look bad for the GOP.

The problem with the Repubs in this regard is that their twisted logic dictates that a loss means that they simply "weren't conservative enough" and will, in true conservative knee jerk fashion, circle the wagons even tighter around themselves and dream up even more ways to corrupt the voting process into their favor.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I wish the DNC spent some money there and maybe a Bernie visit or two to help out. Would have been nice to get that seat.

 

[Jhhnn]

What it means is that even Kansans are catching on to the failure of Repub "vision". Brownback's tax scheme merely further enriched the wealthy while damaging the integrity of systems that Kansans all depend upon. The sad part is that many remain True Believers.

 

[woolfe9998]

I wish the DNC spent some money there and maybe a Bernie visit or two to help out. Would have been nice to get that seat.

It seems unlikely that additional funding and appearances would have swung it 7 points to change the outcome. Yet the outcome is encouraging because the dem turnout was extremely high. It suggests a high dem turnout for 2018. The dems biggest disadvantage is turnout, which is a far worse problem for them in mid terms than in presidential years. If the dems really do get their people out next year, I think we'll see the House shift dem.

 

[HomerJS]

20+ pt swing, not bad.
So called "terrible" governor is terrible not because of some scandal, but because he is actually implementing Republican policies, cutting taxes, cutting spending, and blocking Medicaid expansion.

So this guy executes almost 100% of the GOP agenda and that makes him bad?

Explanation??

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

It seems unlikely that additional funding and appearances would have swung it 7 points to change the outcome. Yet the outcome is encouraging because the dem turnout was extremely high. It suggests a high dem turnout for 2018. The dems biggest disadvantage is turnout, which is a far worse problem for them in mid terms than in presidential years. If the dems really do get their people out next year, I think we'll see the House shift dem.

I think at this point, the democratic party could submit an overripe banana for any office and get ample support.

 

[theeedude]

The real problem for the GOP is their policies are incredibly unpopular. To the point that they had to bail on repealing Obamacare, and Brownback implementing them is dragging down Kansas Republicans.

 

[brycejones]

So this guy executes almost 100% of the GOP agenda and that makes him bad?

Explanation??

Kansas can serve as a case study for how supply side economics is total bull shit. That and the huge hole blown in the state budget from his tax policies.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

It seems unlikely that additional funding and appearances would have swung it 7 points to change the outcome. Yet the outcome is encouraging because the dem turnout was extremely high. It suggests a high dem turnout for 2018. The dems biggest disadvantage is turnout, which is a far worse problem for them in mid terms than in presidential years. If the dems really do get their people out next year, I think we'll see the House shift dem.

I thought he lost by 2-3%