I had thought it was over 3-1 but I see looking over my source again that I allocated about $7M to the wrong PAC - the numbers above look more in line. I retract my previous comments.
Bricker is right here. Yeah, we all have a tendency to predict things the way we’d like them to be. But if we were to start placing bets on those predictions, we’d either run out of money or learn to predict more accurately real quick.
You’re making the same mistake that critics of Nate Silver did when he offered to wager on the outcome of an election those critiques summarized here.
Analysis is cheap. You can find pundits who will make a well-argued analysis of any issue you want in any direction. Correctly predicting the future is much harder. What’s really interesting is analysis by people who have proven that their analysis is more accurate than noise.
A bet is a tax on bullshit, paid by the bullshitters to those whose analysis is worth a damn.
There are going to be six special elections for house seats in 2017.
CA-34 was a Dem held seat in one of the most heavily D districts in the country (Cook PVI D+35!). After the primary it was D v D for the seat and a D won. That’s a victory, but one would be foolish to interpret that as a sign of an impending D wave.
Then there were KS-4 and MT-at large. Both of those seats were vacated by Trump appointees in heavily R leaning districts. Republicans won both seats, but both races were closer than the November 2016 house elections. Some are arguing that these results indicate a shift of the electorate as a whole toward the Democrats and might indicate that the D’s could take the house in 2018. Others argue that ‘moral victory’ is a synonym for ‘loss’ in both cases.
Today we have GA-6 and SC-5. Both vacated by Trump appointees as well. SC-5 is rural and went heavily Trump. Don’t let the fact that fictitious D Frank Underwood held this seat fool you. There’s not much chance of a D victory here, but it is looking like we may get another ‘moral victory’. This leaves us with GA-6. This district went heavily toward the Republican in the house race in 2016 but it was much closer (1.5 points) in the presidential race. This is the best chance for the Democrats to flip a seat in one of these special elections.
For completeness we also have UT-3 to look forward to. This is the reddest of all the seats up for grabs this year and probably won’t even get talked about much.
So the Democrats have five chances to flip house seats this year, but realistically they will either go 1-4 or 0-5. In real terms there is almost no difference in the grand scheme of things between those two situations. Winning the GA-6 seat would be largely symbolic. However, symbols are important sometimes. One actual victory sprinkled among the moral victories amplifies the message of, “we’re turning this thing around,” to some degree. Certainly more so than an 0-5 team talking about how much better they are getting.
Indeed. And when you look at how the GA6 went for Presidential races prior to 2016, you’ll see it’s a very Republican district.
2000: George W. Bush 68% - Al Gore 32%
2004: George W. Bush 70% - John Kerry 29%
2008: John McCain 62% - Barack Obama 37%
2012: Mitt Romney 61% - Barack Obama 38%
As I said long ago about these races today: They will be won by the Republican candidates, just as expected.
What this means for 2018 is as yet undetermined, and won’t be until, yeah, you guessed it, 2018. In the meantime, lots of “Liberals” will try to feel good by using the results to predict all sorts of positive things. Have fun. 
I voted today in SC-5. Not much of anyone there. One guy who showed up at the wrong precinct’s voting location because he didn’t vote for any of the two Republican primary elections in the race, but he was there to vote against the Democrat! (The county updated precincts recently).
Well, not in this thread, no. But it is a point that I agree with, and have made in other threads in the past.
Bricker, you say that you’re right on these sorts of bets more often than not. Do you have any numbers? Ideally, how much total you’ve spent on political bets, and how much total you’ve brought in from them. Ordinarily I wouldn’t even bother asking, but you’re the sort of guy who just might have actual records on this.
Here’s a link to where the NYT will be reporting vote totals as they come in.
There will undoubtedly be other sites doing so as well, but the results for the April 18 first round are cluttering up my Googling.
Also, I expect 538 will be live blogging once the polls close.
Bad news for the Dems, it’s been pouring most of the afternoon here in Atlanta (I work in downtown), and the heavy rain is mostly going to be affecting the pro-Ossoff area in the South and Southeast of the District.
Thanks Lance Turbo for the link.
Indeed. It looks, as nearly everyone in this thread predicted, as though Ossoff is going to lose. 538 is also following SC’s special election, where the Republican is almost certainly going to win as well.
Again, Democrats who might be disheartened should remember that these special elections are being called in districts that the Republican establishment considered to be very, very safe, such that they wouldn’t need to worry about losing a Republican if that R went into the cabinet. If you’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen in 2018, look not just at who wins, but by how much they win. If Dems outperform significantly, that’s a sign of what might happen when elections are called in districts that aren’t so safely Republican.
It’s gonna be close. I dare say that if SC is close too, that might foreclose a lot of the potential hot takes about the uniqueness of GA-06.
Courtesy of 538, a paper:
That’s all well and fine, but in the meantime perfectly decent people will have to suffer under a Republican who thinks believing in fairy tales is a good reason to officially regard homosexuals as second-class citizens and that people shouldn’t necessarily be paid enough to live on.
Either you aren’t understanding me, or I’m really misunderstanding you, or that was a massive non sequitur. Nothing in what I wrote should be construed to mean that everything is fine and dandy now.
No, I get it. It’s nice that Democrats are making strong showings in what were once Republican strongholds, that bodes well for the future. But I want to see Republicans lose now!
Me too, me too. But any loss of a special election for the house is going to be meaningful only as a symbol: the same people who suffer under Republicans will continue to suffer under Republicans, even if Ossoff somehow pulls it out.
The real question, I think, isn’t whether he wins, because that single victory isn’t super meaningful. The real question is whether the margins indicate Republicans aren’t doing as well now as they did seven months ago.
So yeah, an Ossoff upset would be awesome; but his predicted dog-bites-man loss shouldn’t cause people to lose hope.
Oh, please. Literally no one is going to suffer because of the outcome of an election for one Representative out of 435.
It’s a good thing that “in the meantime” is a phrase with meaning, innit?
Do I ever!
An aggregate summary: I have had $3350 in action in political prediction bets since 2008. Counting the Ossoff election as a done deal, I will have won $9890 – that is, I have $9890 more than I started with. That’s not retirement money, I grant. But it’s fair to call it consistent winning.
This does not include non-monetary bets (“If you lose, you have to keep a humiliating sig for six months,” type stakes.) And it does not include non-political bets.
Do I ever!
An aggregate summary: I have had $3350 in action in political prediction bets since 2008. Counting the Ossoff election as a done deal, I will have won $9890 – that is, I have $9890 more than I started with. That’s not retirement money, I grant. But it’s fair to call it consistent winning.
This does not include non-monetary bets (“If you lose, you have to keep a humiliating sig for six months,” type stakes.) And it does not include non-political bets.
Notably, it includes plenty of bets in favor of propositions I don’t personally favor. That is, I don’t in the least shy away from wagering “Yes,” on an outcome I strongly disfavor.