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David McCormick has filed TWO new lawsuits to challenge and throw out provisional ballots in Philadelphia. Admits Philly has 15-20k provisional ballots left.

https://x.com/marceelias/status/1854853573953138939

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Yeah . . .seemingly conflicting info out there but seems like that race isn't really over yet?

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Do those provisional ballots mean Casey still has a chance? Did AP call this race prematurely?

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AP called it. But other outfits, such as NBC, the NY Times and Decision Desk, haven't.

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So, did AP call it prematurely? Is there or is there not a chance that Casey may still pull out a victory? I thought races were called only when a different result was, practically speaking, virtually impossible – not just improbable.

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I guess we'll see. They may have. But I'd still have my money on McCormick.

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I frankly don't care at the moment who's more likely to win. What matters more is all the votes get counted and if as the Secretary Schmidt says there are 100k+ votes left to be adjudicated and potentially counted, then they need to be properly dealt with in good faith before any proclamations and judgments are made.

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It's 35,000 votes at this point, I'm skeptical there's enough votes out there.

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If NBC's sources are remotely correct, there's about 125k votes alone remaining in Philadelphia alone, though I dunno if that includes provisional ballots and the overseas.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/pennsylvania-senate-results

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Any articles looking into that?

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Unfortunately it's paywalled but Philadelphia Inquirer reports there's apparently at least 100k+ ballots left that have to be adjudicated and/or counted including overseas ballots. This matches up with what Secretary Schmidt has reported and probably aligns with what we have from NBC and their reports on the remaining votes. We have no idea how many ballots will be rejected, but apparently many are from Philadelphia and its suburbs.

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/casey-mccormick-pennsylvania-recount-20241108.html

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

The sources seem to vary, but I think at the baseline 100k+ is the minimum amount of outstanding ballots left to count in Pennsylvania according to the secretary Al Schmidt.

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House could end up 222-213. Which is how it ended up in 2022.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

That’s also how it theoretically was going into the election (Really 220-212, but 221-214 with vacant seats filled and then add a net loss of one due to redistricting). If it really is an R+4 environment, the fact that we basically just held par in the House is something. Disappointing, but something.

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It's a crazy good result basically proving that Trump had zero coattails; Millions of Trump voters voted only for Trump and left the down ballot mostly (if not all)blank

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You can really see this in Nevada: While Jacky Rosen has about the same amount of votes as Harris, Sam Brown has 70,000 fewer votes than Trump.

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Holy shit!

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I really hope the Republicans don't figure out a way to turn the Trump only voters into reliable or even semi-reliable Republican voters.

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My theory is many folks of the MAGA movement just will stop voting after trump leaves. I just don’t see JD Vance or even a Don Jr able to bring out those low propensity voters after trump.

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That's my theory as well. But I just learned in this election that a lot of our positive theories were wrong.

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Yeah they didn't come out for the Trump acolytes in 22 and it's amazing so many didn't even vote straight R when he WAS on the ballot. It's like Trump activates the Perot contingent who are loyal only to him.

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Yeah, and thank goodness he's an old, deranged man who we will outlive.

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It likely reduces democratic turnout as well though. People aren't as scared of JD Vance cause he isn't as crude or bombastic

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You're right. Harris actually has a few (3k) more votes than Rosen. She also has more votes than Casey (36k) or Slotkin (15k). Not Baldwin (4k) or Gallego (71k!), though.

Edited to correct an error.

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Bingo !

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I'm seeing more like 220-215 as the most likely outcome.

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What are some of the most impressive Democratic victories in this election?

I've got to say that if you told me ahead of time that Trump would win North Carolina by 3.5%, I'd have assumed that they would easily flip the LG and AG offices. How did Hunt and Jackson win those open seats despite that?

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Jackson. Good candidate. Former congressman. Hunt. Daughter of a popular former governor.

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Honestly, in this environment; all of the ones in swing districts are impressive but imo Jared Golden in the House; Rosen in the Senate ??

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Yeah I'll second those two choices. And Ruben Gallego if he wins.

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I went with Rosen due to the toxicity of Lake

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He is probably one wins in an electorate with the largest numeric Trump edge.

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What's your guess on final House? just curious

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224-211 or 223-212.

Holding all remaining incumbent seats in CA, picking up OR05, losing AK-AL. That is status quo at 213. Two Texans switching party to R shortly, even before the new congress. That is 224-211.

If the late CA ballots are much much favorable, with Harris running about 10% better than already counted, i guess picking up CA27. To 223-212.

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So 221-214 possibly, but 220-215 if Dave Min wins?

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Who do you think switches to R in Texas?

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Texans are switching to R…?

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In this environment; I am good with either (obviously the more for us the better)

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Is there a report that they might switch?

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Gluesenkamp-Perez for supposedly having the hardest hold and instead (presumably) winning almost comfortably.

Slotkin, Marcy Kaptur and Golden (assuming he wins) also come to mind for edging it out in difficult circumstances.

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Marcy Kaptur, apparently hanging on once again.

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Her also; let's get a list going ??

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We did fairly well at the state legislature level, considering the headwinds at the top. And Eugene Vindman deserves a call-out!

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any dem who held on with Rump winning their jurisdiction. Kudos to those Trump voters who stopped voting after they voted for the orange menace, saved us potentially 3 senate seats

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I was surprised that Josh Riley beat Molinaro to flip that purple seat in upstate NY.

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Same

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Perhaps it was written about yesterday or Wednesday, and I missed it, but what is the news on the various state supreme court races? And the consequences for liberal/conservative control?

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We flipped a seat in Michigan, widening the D majority.

Last I checked, the race in NC was too close to call, but the R candidate was winning.

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Sounds like we held a Liberal seat in MT

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The Downballot tracker has a good rundown. You have to click the "home" button on it to see races other than the house.

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Swingish state trends given national leans:

States to feel good about: GA WI and MI

States that stagnated yet long-term trends are favorable with adjustments: PA and NC

States that reverted but conflicting downballot news; long-term trend unclear: AZ and NV

States that were a fucking disaster: TX

States that we can just put a fork in: FL

Can someone explain what happened in the Lone Star State? 3 cycles of improving performances and then it's just Red Wedding for Dems everywhere like it was the Obama years.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Latino vote went for Trump, apparently.

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Yup; they clearly hold the balance of power( our messaging to the Hispanic voters is missing something)

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City centers turnout sucks. Outer suburbs with a lot of newcomers, went much redder, which had been bluing.

I think Cohn had one piece talking about the changing Electorate as well. TX’s inflow leans red; FL inflow leans red and loses a lot of competitive section in outflow; GA’s net inflow leans blue (turnout sucked in town and outstate minority precincts). NC was more balanced.

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Yeah seemed like an awful combination of crap please turnout, collapse among swing voters, and transiency/in-state migration going against us. But damn did not expect it to be near that bad. It feels like a decade of work went up in smoke.

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I just think it's messaging

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I think it’s the ownership structure of the news media, and its bothsiderism and normalization of Trump and MAGA, that blocks or hinders effective Democratic messaging.

I am seeing very little for which to fault the Harris Campaign – in fact I think they ran a stellar campaign with great messaging. I don’t have sufficient insight into downballot campaigns.

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Border

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The swing state with the best trend is actually Wisconsin. Dane shifted just 1.1 points to the right and Milwaukee 1.5. None of the Fox valley, Sheboygan, or Manitowoc shifted right by even 1 point. Best of all, all three of the WOW counties shifted left: Washington (!?) 1.8, Ozaukee 1.6, Waukesha 1.1. I wouldn't have guessed before the election that Washington would show the most improvement from 2020 to 2024.

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Bodes well for 2026, imo, since Wisconsin has always been the swing state I’ve felt most leery about.

Then again, it has an above-average educational attainment so who knows

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And Baldwin and Trump are both winning right now by 29,000. I'd like to study those Trump-Baldwin voters. I can understand Trump-Brown voters, or Trump-Tester voters.

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Baldwin has only 4.5k more votes than Harris does. (I was wrong when I said earlier that Harris had more) There may be more Trump-Baldwin voters than that, but it's likely too small a group to conclude much about. Maybe they voted Baldwin because they had a good experience with her staff on some constituent-service matter.

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One more thing: I have never seen a complete American presidential election result. And by that I mean an overview that includes and specifies the number of provisional ballots for each state, and gives a full accounting of these – without having to go to individual state-specific sources.

PS. Perhaps The Downballot can collate such an overview for this 2024 election, after the final counting is done?

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In New Hampshire there's no such thing as provisional ballots.

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There's a almanac in every public library; it's called something like The Almanac of American Elections (or some such); or maybe The Almanac of American Politics (or close to it)

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That is because we don’t have a national election.

The only numbers the federal government got as finals, would be the numbers presented to both Houses’ own certificates of election, as well as the electors’ certificate. Usually summed into the reports published by the House and FEC.

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I understand that presidential elections are actually multiple, state-administered elections. Nevertheless I would think such an overview would be pretty effing fundamental, and that someone would collate those numbers, put together a final straightforward overview and make it easily accessible at some website.

When I’ve searched for this for past elections, I have ascribed my inability to find it to search-ineptitude or lack of perseverance on my part. But perhaps it is not?

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Anyone have thoughts on how the closest remaining House races could break? Am particularly interested in the outlook for AK-AL (Peltola), AZ-06 (Ciscomani), CA-13 (Duarte), CA-27 (Garcia), CA-41 (Calvert), CA-45 (Steel), CA-47 (Open) based on geography of outstanding ballots.

Kind of hoping for a 218-217 GOP majority, where they technically control the House but have essentially no chance of passing major legislation.

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Not sure about ALaska, Republicans are probably favored in all those other races I would assume

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According to the Digest above, AZ 6, CA 27 and CA 47 may be the best bets.

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Unless the remaining Cochise and Pima votes have more favorable margins, AZ-06 looks pretty challenging given the volume of outstanding Cochise ballots. Do we know if the remaining batches in CA-27 and 47 are from friendly territory?

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The Digest seems to imply that they are. Pima favors Engel and probably has twice as many outstanding ballots than Cochise.

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The remaining votes in CA are almost all mail votes except in San Berdoo. They should be more favorable to Dems than the votes that are already in.

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We got new mail from Clark, Washoe, Lyon, Douglas and Lander counties last night.

Added together, there were ~27,800 new votes, and Rosen won 55.5% to Brown's 36.3%

Rosen net gain of over 5,300 votes

🔵Rosen lead: 17,553 (1.3%)

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It's just a matter of time on the ✓ call

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It's been called

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Ok but NOT according to NBC

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So it looks like the swing state order from D to R ended up WI > MI > PA > GA > NC = NV > AZ. PA is the tipping point state yet again - Trump won the electoral college by 250,545 votes.

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Thanks for the info (I was telling folks this at local DEC gathering last night, and they were stunned) because the media narrative of any Red Wave is utter BS

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You can't declare a wave if you lose House seats.

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Ben Wikler remains a god among men

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I gotta say this, the state party apparatus in most states imo did an incredible job against the headwinds of an R+4 electorate

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One of the biggest takeaways from this election should be that campaigns still matter, maybe not quite enough to win in an environment like this, but certainly enough to shift things to the left by 3+ points of where we’d think the swing states would be in an environment where New Jersey and Illinois were decided by single digits. All of the effort that all of the volunteers put into this was not wasted, and it’s why people like Slotkin and Baldwin won.

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I'm holding off on evaluating AZ for now, the next 230K ballots from Maricopa should be pretty blue, given the partisan reg of the bucket. State could move left a point still.

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Furthermore, NBC has not called Pennsylvania Senate (though I remain skeptical)

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Harris should run for California Gov? Sharrod Brown or Tim Ryan for OH special?

In any case, regarding the Senate, I'd like to point out that Trumps 2018 midterm was good for House Democrats and not great for Senate Democrats.

Furthermore, with this Casey loss, Democrats now need to hope to gain red seats or play the long game and win back the toss up states over the next six years.

Assuming the Casey loss makeup will be

Democrats 47

10 swing state Democrats. 12 if you include NH. No red state Democrats.

Republicans 53

4 swing state Republicans. 1 blue state Republican.

Democrats rely much more on toss-up states for our majority than Republicans. I'd also like to point out that federally, North Carolina is close but has not 'swung' for Democrats in 14 years. Not really toss-up imo.

We have the possibility to win in red states in the short term depending on environment and candidate quality, scandal, ect. Of course. But just as a baseline, we are screwed for 6 years if PA is gone assuming 2018 conditions where we moved the House but not the Senate.

Maine won't budge unless Collins retires. Tills is working overtime to moderate his image too and as I pointed out NC is not really swingy federally.

In Alaska Peltola is our best shot but I highly doubt Murkowski endorses against a fellow Senator. The House is one thing. The Senate is another. And also Alaska just ditched ranked choice voting so thats another headwind now.

Wisconsin is a Republican seat and Johnson will be up in a Presidential year. He almost retired two years ago so maybe he will in 2028. But that chance is four years off.

That is assuming we hold all other swing states and keep the blue ones. Or assuming we don't go back to relying on picking off the odd red ones. Cornyn isn't going anywhere, especially if he gets leader. Beshear gives us our only chance however slim in KY. And we would need a miracle candidate and environment to rent the OH special seat for two years but would likely lose it when it's fully up.

Answer me this: what is the likelihood Democrats don't lose a single set in the next 6 years themselves?

And when was the last time a Democrat took an open Red state senate seat or ousted a red state Republican? Not including swing states. More than 10 years ago. More than 15? Heitkamp or Donnelly. Times have changed since then.

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The idea that North Carolina is unwinnable seems false. A better candidate than Cunningham would have won it in 2020.

And Trump’s 2018 midterm wasn’t bad for Senate Democrats, it just wasn’t good enough for us to hold Senate seats in all of the states that voted for him by 15+ points. Places like North Carolina, Ohio, or even Iowa and Alaska should in theory be more winnable for us in 2026 than North Dakota was in 2018. I’m not saying we will win them, but I don’t buy into the doom and gloom about our Senate chances.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

I did not say NC was unwinnable I said it's close federally, not swingy. It's not a true toss-up on the federal level historically.

I did not say it wasn't winnable. I'm talking about likelihood here. Not that it's impossible.

And we didn't hold North Dakota in 2018 we lost it and that was a Trump midterm. There is nothing in the trends suggesting Iowa or Ohio will even be close. And Ohio wouldn't even help us longterm it would be a 2 year rental.

Chances of Senate control in 2 years is less than 10% imo. In four years maybe 30/70. In six years, assuming we don't lose a single seat. We have a chance at a tied Senate. That's reality based on the current makeup of the senate and incumbent electoral history.

The federal judiciary is gone and so is the Supreme Court.

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Ohio actually didn’t trend particularly Republican this year, it shifted about the same amount to the right compared to 2020 as Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania did. It would be hard to win, but I don’t think it’s out of reach if we have a wave.

And the only time we had a Senate race in North Carolina in a Blue Wave year (2008), we won. We’ve just had bad luck there with it not having a race there in our good years in 06/18.

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The only blue wave year we've had that affected the Senate was 2008. And arguably we haven't had a blue wave since to that degree.

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Definitely 2006 as well. And in 2018, we won every Senate seat that was up in a swing state except Florida, and 3 Senate seats in red states. If we didn’t have a blue wave that year, we probably would have lost 3-5 more Senate seats that year.

Obviously, if your take is that we will never have a blue wave again, we’re doomed and nothing will change that. I just don’t see what the evidence is that we will only ever have elections like 2020 and 2022 for the foreseeable future.

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There's a lot of unknowns right now. No-one would've predicted in November 2016 that we'd win a Senate seat in frikkin' Alabama a year later. Trump could be smart and basically just re-run his first term (and he wasn't even popular then), or he could do a bunch of crazy shit and see his approval sink lower than Biden's at his worst (I already think he'll start his term with the lowest approval for a POTUS in their first quarter of a term in history). On paper Tillis will be really hard to beat because he's quasi-moderate and very Generic R in a Tilt R state, but this Administration could run off the rails really badly.

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"And when was the last time a Democrat took an open Red state senate seat or ousted a red state Republican?"

Alabama 2017.

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And that was a 2 year rental and required the open seat Republican competitor to be a far right child molester.

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Have you seen the folks Republicans are now nominating to major seats? I rule out nothing.

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"Arizonans Defeat Three GOP Measures That Would Have Restricted Their Voting Power"

The measures would have largely ended judicial elections and squashed future citizen-led initiatives, which progressives have used to pursue priorities like abortion access.

https://boltsmag.org/arizona-results-of-democracy-measures-prop-134-136-and-137/

And in other good news:

"Orlando Prosecutor Ousted by Governor Wins Her Job Back"

Monique Worrell defeated the prosecutor Ron DeSantis appointed to replace her last year.

https://boltsmag.org/tampa-orlando-proscutor-elections-2024/

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deletedNov 8
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I'd bet it's because of the congressman

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Across Pennsylvania, we estimate there are approximately 90,000 to 110,000 outstanding provisional ballots to be adjudicated, around 18,000 election-day votes to count in Cambria County, and an undetermined number of outstanding UOCAVA ballots still arriving, likely fewer than 10,000 statewide. These provisional and UOCAVA ballots still need to be counted.

https://x.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1854929506894856667

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Didn't Cambria almost completely count by now? 90% of their precincts are fully counted.

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Cambria had about 70,000 votes for president in 2020, and is currently showing about 52,000, so 18,000 left sounds legit.

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That roughly aligns with the data that NBC is finding with Cambria 72% counted and about 21k votes left.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/pennsylvania-senate-results

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And yet NBC still shows Philadelphia County at 84%. But apparently there's nothing but provisionals left?

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I don’t think they said that.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Update: apparently the estimated remaining votes has gone up in Allegheny from 8500 this morning to 22000 now. Also Erie now has 11000 outstanding ballots left vs 4400 in the morning. Not sure what’s going on but that definitely helps Casey.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Yeah. Should be more like 5000 than 18,000. Unless the unreported precincts are in the more populated area of Cambria.

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This is my back of the envelope math on PA Senate, based on numbers from NBC News:

County D% R% % Reporting Total Votes (K) Incremental D

Philadelphia 79% 19% 85% 676 63

Chester 55% 43% 95% 320 2

Montgomery 60% 38% 95% 508 6

Delaware 60% 37% 95% 321 4

Lancaster 41% 57% 95% 284 (2)

I only looked at counties with a large number of ballots outstanding and a significant D-R difference (i.e. I ignored Allegheny since it's 99+% counted and Bucks since it's basically 50/50). Long story short, there are more than enough ballots out there for Casey to make up the difference and then some. Questions include: 1) Will the late ballots mimic the current D-R ratio and 2) How many more votes will McCormick pick up in the rurals. I'd rather be them than us, but it is by no means over...

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Yes I was doing the same math last night using NBC’s estimated remaining vote count, and if the margins hold up in Philadelphia, he wins outright given the outstanding votes remaining. Even with the adjudication and lawsuit there’s at least 100k outstanding votes many in Philadelphia. It’s a tall order to get half of that tossed out and the recent ruling on ballot curing should mitigate excessive ballot waste. If his margins in Philadelphia alone hold for even just half of that 100k Casey takes the lead outright.

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2026 Republican Senate Committee was the only leadership post they literally couldn't find anyone to run for.

Looks like after the Republican wins Tuesday, every the opportunist Tim Scott will go for it.

https://x.com/thehill/status/1854924657364779209?t=WRvwezot1fBF48WnIhyu1g&s=19

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A scorecard on what's left to count in Arizona.

https://apps.arizona.vote/electioninfo/BPS/47/0

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TLDR - There’s more than enough vote left in Pima to cancel out the remaining R county vote. And from what people with the granular data are saying, the remaining vote in Maricopa is pretty blue.

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Four-term Democratic state lawmaker Janelle Bynum defeated Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer in the highly contested 5th Congressional District race.

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2024/11/janelle-bynum-wins-race-for-congress-flipping-us-house-seat-from-gop-to-democratic-control.html?utm_campaign=theoregonian_sf&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

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Terrific news

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Between winning this seat and the New York seats, we have almost fully redeemed our deepest embarrassments from 2022. Just waiting for California.

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How is Lawler a monument to Maloney's idiocy?

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It’s a long story. The 17th was Mondaire Jones’ district, but after the latest round of redistributing, Maloney decided to switch over, run there, and push Jones out because he thought it was safer than his old seat (the 18th).

Maloney ended up losing to Lawler, while Pat Ryan ran in the 18th and ended up being the only seat in the area that we held in 2022. This all happened while Maloney was head of the D House Re-election Committee.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

I live in the 17th and we learned this year that the first paragraph isn't true. He offered the race to Jones but Jones, who didn't actually live in the 17th, chose to run in blue district and pretended he had been pushed out. Anyway, Jones is a weaker candidate than Maloney and would have lost in 2022 as well.

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Thank you for the correction.

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Speaking of the NY metro, congestion pricing is dead as a doornail. Delaying it probably prevented downballot slippage, so Dems will finish the job and kill it. That, combined with bringing the hammer down on fare evaders, is the way to go to fix the bad vibes.

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A better way to fix the bad vibes in NY/NJ would be if the face of the party wasn’t Eric Adams and Bob Menendez.

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Menendez is a non-factor.

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Not going forward, of course - I’m just saying that having all of that out in public probably didn’t do us many favors this year.

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Doesn't help that Hochul is unpopular too. Basically every high profile dem in the NYC metro is unpopular. You'd almost think they wanted us to be out of power.

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