I think it might be a tad bit closer. Maybe a couple of points for the less popular Loeffler, maybe 3-4 for Perdue. But in the end, same basic result. Hopefully we’re all dead wrong.
I’m not making a prediction because we don’t know what Trump will do. If he’s convinced that the Republican party has betrayed him, perhaps after state certification of vote totals, then he might try and sabotage these Senate races.
Trump is incredibly easy to manipulate. The republican party knows this. They will fellate Trump just as long as they need to.
You mean like how "we can rule out the possibility of Biden winning by less than 100 electoral votes"?
I wonder if this race has just seen its equivalent of an “October surprise.”
Would have preferred an EC number closer to 400 for Biden but 306 has beautiful imagery!
I will own up to being wrong about that. Nevertheless, in any election in a swing state, it’s generally safe to assume Democrats will win.
Democrats are a well-oiled political war machine with every piece in the right place at the right time; Republicans are a herd of cats.
You’re guessing, and the justification for your guess doesn’t make any sense to me. And I want you to be right!
Popular Vote.
2016 Clinton 65,853,514 (51.1%) vs Trump 62,984,828
2020 Biden 79,683,126 (52.0%) vs Trump 73,698,576
YMMV but methinks adulation about the capability of the DEM political machine would be a textbook case of over-eggin’ the puddin’.
Perdue and Ossoff wound up being 49.7 to 48 in the first round. It’s unlikely to be a blowout in any direction and especially nearly impossible for Ossoff to win by more than a hair’s breadth.
Some Trumpers will be mad and stay home. Others will be so mad they show up. The ratio of those groups determines who wins.
IIRC, Georgia is the No. 1 state in the nation in military enlistment (by percentage of population.) This probably wouldn’t fly well.
Except . . . that they lost almost every down ballot election they were contesting in swing states. They only picked up AZ Senate (and CO, which doesn’t really swing anymore). Lost seats in the House and made no progress in state legislatures. I’m baffled — and maybe a little envious — of your confidence based on the Nov. 3 results.
I don’t have any predictions but I do have a couple of thoughts that could make things more challenging for the GOP.
The first is how do they handle Trump’s “victory” declaration. The obvious campaign slogan for the GOP senate candidates should be that with Biden in the white house, they need to be put in the Senate to make sure that his radical agenda doesn’t come to pass. I think that this rationale is the reason that the Democratic senate candidates failed to meet expectations. People thought Biden was a shoo-in and many voters are leery of one party rule.
The problem is that they can only make that argument if they admit that Biden is actually going to be in the Whitehouse. So are they going to risk the wrath of Trump’s base by admitting reality, or are they going to leave this line of attack on the table untouched. In the end I think they will bend to reality. By the time of the special election the electoral college vote will be fully certified, and few people if any will really think that Trump will be in for a second term.
Issue number 2, is that on December 11, about three weeks before the runoff election and 3 days before the early voting starts, the funding for the US government stops. Trump has zero incentive to pass legislation to keep it going. His base loves a shut down (less government good, no government great!) and overall public opinion is irrelevant at this point. He will probably see this as his last big bargaining chip before he’s out the door, and he’s not going to let it go for small potatoes. Meanwhile a government shutdown instigated by the Republican president’s veto and a Republican senate with insufficient will to override that veto is not going to be a good advertisement to put more Republicans into the senate.
It is not. At all. That’s why they are swing states. See, e.g., 2016.
Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina from this year would dispute this as well.
Trump supporters on Parler are advising each other to write in Trump’s name for the Senate runoff election, or boycott it altogether. We should assist these brave souls in their noble efforts:
Not by a long shot. Sure they didnt do as well as hoped, but they were pouring their energy into winning the White House.
I’m not sure if you’re disagreeing with me, but it’s a fact that Democrats lost almost every competitive down ballot race. They’re likely to have lost about 10 seats in the House, leaving them with a 5 seat majority. So far they’ve netted one Senate seat out of 5-6 that were thought to be genuinely competitive.
And sure they were pouring a lot of energy into the White House, but there was a LOT of focus on down ballot races races. In particular, Democrats said that they had learned their lesson from 2010, when Republicans focused on state legislative races and were consequently able to draw Congressional and state legislative districts that entrenched their majority for almost a decade. There were predictions that Democrats could flip up or substantially reduce Republican majorities in 8-10 state legislative chambers, giving them control of or at least leverage over redistricting in those states.
Democrats didn’t flip a single state legislative chamber. Not a one. They lost the New Hampshire House and Senate. In almost every state legislative body, they lost seats or at best broke even.
This will have enormous consequences. Republicans are set to control the redistricting of 188 congressional seats — or 43 percent of the entire House of Representatives. By contrast, Democrats will control the redistricting of, at most, 73 seats, or 17 percent. Since state legislatures write voting laws, they’ll also be free to keep passing legislation to limit voter participation. A Biden Justice Department can challenge those laws, and the final decision on their constitutionality will be made by a federal judiciary stacked with Trump appointees and led by a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court.
So, yeah, I’m not much in the “look on the bright side” camp right now.
What could they have done? At least ten million more people than 2016 crawled out from the dark corners of the country to vote for Trump. I think the Democrats did about as well as they possible could, taking everything into consideration. That’s the bright side. If I had known in advance that there were another ten million+ voters who didn’t vote Trump in 2016 but did in 2020, I would have been certain we were about to lose everything, again. But we won the presidency and held onto the House, and we still have a slim but real shot at the Senate. It’s terrible to accept, but it turns out that Trump might just be a savant at getting people to come out and vote for him. And still we won. I’m relieved. Not elated, but relieved. This is about as good as it could have gotten, knowing what we know now.