Here we are, almost all the way through the primaries.
Except for Louisiana, of course, which doesn’t bother with separate elections and will only do run-offs of the numbers on November 6 don’t pan out.
Trump has two jailbirds in his orbit, and I guarantee there’s more to come, but if we really REALLY want to shoehorn him and his whole rotten administration out of office, there’s only one way to do that and that’s to toss the Republicans out on their collective red asses.
But how do we do that?
Well, this is as good a time as any to remind you WHY I’m keeping Cassandra’s List in the first place.
The numbers in my calculations represent the TOTAL turnout/primary votes for ALL Democrats (D) and Republicans (R) in each district. I’m not talking about the votes a single candidate gets. I mean all the votes ANY Democrat in the race receives during the primary.
That makes calculations for states like California and Washington a bitch and a half, because I have to add all the votes up and exclude the (usually crappy) numbers for any third party candidates, and with over 50 seats just for CA’s House representatives, that takes some work.
In theory, this is the year everyone woke up and we’re going all out to make sure we get that Blue Wave(TM), nonsense that almost certainly originated with one of the disinformation farms in good ol’ Mother Russia.
I’m holding off on deep analysis (comparing the races in each of the 435 House seats) until we get through this month, because Florida has a lot of races in the House, and because I’m still waiting for Washington’s numbers to finalize.
But do I believe in a Blue Wave? Nope, I don’t.
I don’t know how many seats D’s will gain this year, because the reply is still hazy in states like New York, where elections without multiple candidates are assumed to be decided and nobody registers a vote in that district with just one candidate. It’s perpetually wrong in others, because it won’t matter who runs, because the D gets the vote, or the R does, no matter how good the opposition might be.
We’ll gain some. I doubt it will be a full 23, though, because of the states themselves.
In the states where I have data I can compare, those primary numbers generally extrapolated in 2016 and in the past. And in the states that mattered most two years ago (theoretically “swing” states that might have gone either way), I *knew* how those numbers were going to look in the General by the time the primaries were done.
By calculating ALL the D votes together and all the R votes in the primary, I could guess where the holes were. It’s not rocket science. It’s statistics.
If the state used a convention to select candidates (I’m looking at Utah and at least one of the southern states), I had to assume the numbers weren’t reliable. If the candidates ran unopposed and there was no way to see the numbers because the state didn’t put the candidates on the ballot, same thing happened.
Yes, I made mistakes in a couple of places because I didn’t look at the other races the way I am with this list. I messed up WA and LA in particular, but I knew by September (and really by July) that Trump was going to win in 2016, because I knew how FL, PA, OH and MI were going to go.
That’s why I gave states reliability scores. Going back to Bill Clinton’s first term in 1992 and calculating each election at the start of an eight-year term, I could see where the flips happened, particularly with regard to the Voting Rights Act and the southern states. But flipping isn’t exclusive to the bottom tier states. No, you can see it in any state where there’s a majority of Republicans in the state house, an R for governor and a lot of partisan gerrymandering. I guarantee you, just because a House member has resigned, that’s no guarantee the seat will flip this November. It just means a new face might still be wearing a red tie.
My numbers most resemble Sabato’s Crystal Ball. I’ve analyzed half the races so far, and the numbers are still best guesses for about a third of the states where primaries have happened, but just based on the shenanigans in GA, I can say that blue wave is Russian fiction.
Some examples of what I mean by shenanigans:
Houston Press: Third Ward Voters Receive Incorrect Voter Suspensions After Republican Challenge Campaign and Houston Press: Republican Party Challenge to Voter Registration in Minority Areas Deepens
McClatchy: Bizarre tales, confusing ballots from Georgia’s primary contained in federal lawsuit
and
NY Times: ACLU of Georgia Slams Plan to Close Many of County’s Polls
Here’s a tip: If you aren’t supporting the ACLU and you have extra income, become a sustaining member like I am and give them the weapons they need to combat this BS, or the Senate is going to flip hard. It’s possible we could get some of the 23 House seats we need, but I don’t know for sure that we’re going to get all of them. Even if a House member resigned, there’s no way to guarantee that the seat will flip. Some states just won’t switch sides.
Duncan Hunter‘s CA 50th is just such a race. He pulls R votes 2:1 against Ds. The next candidate in the primary is a D, but third place was a R, and if he winds up on the ballot because Hunter resigns, chances are good Rs will just move on to the next R, because given a choice they’re STILL voting for the Not Democrat.
If you’re still toying with voting third party? You’ve learned nothing. Turn in your citizenship card or go register as the Republican you really are, because I can personally guarantee that the only Independents who are going to win this year’s election caucus with Democrats anyway. You are why we can’t have nice things.
And as for Trump? Better bloggers and news analysts are going to town on his very public meltdown over Cohen and Manafort. While I could pop me some popcorn and take on that narrative, I’d rather concentrate on THIS year’s election process.
We have 76 days to go. I’ll get the analysis done by September for most of the states. Count on it.