I don’t think he was planted. It’s not his first time running, and in any case I really don’t think Joe Manchin is especially well known around here.
I’m more suspicious of the efforts to put a Libertarian named O’Connor on the November ballot.
Some people may think, “Hur hur, I’m sending a message!” Some people may have formed their decision to vote Green back when it looked like O’Connor didn’t stand a chance.
Both groups may have a small number of persuadables hiding in their midst. Again, I’m not hopeful, but if I’m wishing for a pony anyway, I may as well add this to the list. 
It looks like Balderson 50%, O’Connor 49%. The Green candidate took enough votes away from O’Connor to make the difference.
3,435 provisional ballots still to be counted and probably won’t be enough to knock Balderson out of his lead. But damn – this one is close. Let’s see what happens when they re-run in November.
I really don’t think we can read that much into the motivations of people who turn out for a single-issue election in August to vote for the damn Green Party candidate. And I’m not sure I buy it, but I read something a few days ago about the O’Connor campaign having internal numbers showing that Manchik voters were evenly split on their second choice.
Edit: In any case, even if you believe all of those votes were “taken” from O’Connor, Balderson’s margin has grown.
There are also a few thousand absentee ballots outstanding (they had to be postmarked on Monday), but I think only a fraction of those tend to show up.
I don’t think the provisional/absentee ballots will be anywhere near enough, but for anyone clinging to hope, you have to wait: Ohio does not count these votes until ten days after the election.
I do wonder about the Green Party voters. How many of them voted 3rd party out of spite because they were sick and tired of being bombarded by both sides? How many are purity ponies?
The rematch in November won’t have nearly the same level of national exposure.
Ohio does have a Governor and Senate race in November and it won’t be in the middle of vacation season. The rematch will be interesting
How often do people take time to go vote because they’re tired of hearing about an election? I don’t think anywhere in the district had anything else on the ballot (some other parts of the state had local levies) so people were only showing up if they cared about this race.
A good working assumption is that if there were no Green candidate in the election 50% of those who voted Green wouldn’t have voted for either candidate. The 50% is a ballpark figure; it could be as little as 30% or it could be as high as 70%. However, it’s fair to say nowhere near 100% of the Green vote would go to the Dem candidate.
I’m not sure I follow you; if O’Connor had gotten every single one of the Green votes, then wouldn’t Balderson still be ahead?
I voted in this special election yesterday. Didn’t even know there was a green party candidate until I was standing at my voting machine. For a flicker of a second I thought, “maybe I should just vote for the green party candidate because I’m sick of both parties.” But O’Connor seems to be a reasonably moderate Democrat and I knew the Green party vote would be a waste.
Yeah, unless things have changed I totaled it up late last night and getting every Green vote wouldn’t have swung the results.
I don’t care how badly you want a 3rd party, are tired of ‘Republicocrats’ or want to stick it to the man.
Take a look at this 2 minute clip and tell me how any rational person could ever vote for Joe Manchik. I’m sure the reason he can’t remember his campaign website is that it hasn’t been updated since 2016z
This morning NPR interviewed a Republican about this race. The spin was in overdrive. First, he criticized Democrats for bringing in outside money. Then refused to say if Trump’s visit was good or bad. Then said Pelosi was the deciding factor. Then said Republicans had laser focus on local issues. I wish the interviewer had called him on his crap, but ultimately he sounded befuddled and incompetent, so fair enough. It would’ve been better to have declined the interview.
I was amazed how many times he invoked Pelosi. She’s like the bogey man for Republicans.
The GOP overwhelmingly brought in more outside money, by a $6.2M to $1.2M margin. And even with all that, they could still only pull out a win by <1% in a district that’s been overwhelmingly Republican.
90 days, sports fans.
She’s the Democratic leader. Republicans are supposed to hate her.
Since there’s no other thread for primary results from last night, I’ll just mention what I thought was the biggest news of the night: the absolutely crushing defeat of right-to-work in Missouri. Looks like the final tally was 32.5% Yes, 67.5% No, with ‘Yes’ being a vote for RTW.
Yeah, but they seem to get particularly worked up over powerful liberal women.
And now that they’re finally realizing that Hillary’s no longer on the ballot (and Gillibrand, Harris, etc. aren’t well known yet), Pelosi’s what they’ve got left.