USA Politics

It'll be really fascinating to see how this turns out. A lot of enthusiasm everywhere. Ideally, I'd like to see everyone vote.
 
Voter participation increasing during the rule of a controversial leader seems to be a common theme in countries where elections are actual elections and not "elections".
 
The Flash said:
Voter participation increasing during the rule of a controversial leader seems to be a common theme in countries where elections are actual elections and not "elections".
Click to expand...
Absolutely. It happened here in Canada at the last federal election, happened in Ontario too. The more controversial, the better the turnout, it seems.
 
https://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2018-election-results-coverage/#3260

"The forecast I’m most confident in for today’s elections is that, if Democrats have a remotely good night, Trump will claim that some sort of voter fraud took place in one or several races. This is especially likely if Democrats take over one or both chambers of Congress, in which case Trump may make such claims in order to call into question the legitimacy of any new Democratic majority. He’s already hinted at this, and he said in 2016 that he’d only accept the results of that year’s presidential election if he won it. He even claimed voter fraud after he won."

I agree that this is one thing we can be sure we'll see. Trump is not afraid to challenge the legitimacy of the election for his favour.
 
Early tomorrow morning European time, probably. Remember the polling places are open until typically 21 local time, and there's a 9 hour difference between Central European Time and US West Coast time.
 
.. don't forget Hawaii and Alaska :) But I would think by 9 CST we will have a really good idea what is going to happen ... everything west of there will pretty much determine "how big" majorities will be in each house
 
There are a few bellwether races in the house and senate that we will see results from pretty early. Indiana senate is a good one to watch to see if Republicans will have a good night in the Senate (if Donnelly loses, Dems are toast). In the house there are a few early red districts that could measure the strength of the blue wave if they flip.

Edit: The link bearfan posted above has all that info already. :facepalm:
 
I'm going to be genuinely interested on whether Elaine Luria or Scott Taylor wins this election. They've bombarded my area with so many ads it's gonna be interesting to know who comes out on top.
 
Yeah Donnelly is toast.

Nelson is down by 58k in Florida but Miami, Tallahassee and especially Broward counties are still missing a lot of votes.

Beto up in TX, still early but Houston has yet to come online and lots of votes left to count in Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio.
 
Beto is holding on surprisingly well. I expected him to be down by double digits by this point.

CO flipped a longtime red district and Jared Polis clinched the governorship.
 
Annnnnd the race is being called for Cruz. Beto was within 3 points though which is really incredible.
 
Still results coming in but the House is solidly blue with the Senate remaining red. So far it looks like a gain of around 30 for Dems in the house and 3 for Republicans in the Senate. Pretty weird night. Seems like the blue wave didn't really pan out. GOP really overperformed in the Senate. It was pretty much the bloodbath that people were expecting two years ago.

The "blue dog" Senate dems are pretty much gone at this point. Joe Manchin is still around but I wouldn't be surprised if he switched parties between now and 2020. He was also the only Democrat to vote for Kavanaugh. His seat was always pretty safe though so I'm not sure how much his vote ultimately mattered.

The election also seemed to be a pretty solid rebuke of progressivism. The three most progressive candidates (Beto, Abrams, Gillum) lost. Gillum and Abrams especially underperformed compared to the polls.

Dems are doing about as well as expected in the House. Some upsets here and there. Beto lost his Senate race but he did a great job with turnout and is probably indirectly responsible for some of the House seats in Texas flipping. Really not much to say there. The Dems did a good job campaigning and making as many districts competitive as possible.

Overall the results just illustrate how divided the country is. The house and senate moving in opposite directions like this is pretty unusual.

In some ways I think Trump comes out as the winner here. The ousted Dem senators were in states that he carried and campaigned heavily in this year. He is probably going to face heavy investigations from the House and won't get his border wall, but he pretty much has free reign over any cabinet or judicial appointments at this point. It wasn't a good map to begin with for Dems, but they really shouldn't have lost this many seats with a president as unpopular as Trump. I expect the party to warm to him even more going forward as a result. There are also incoming Republican senators who are replacing retiring Senators who were among the few Trump critics from the GOP. At this point there is no question that the Republican party belongs to Trump. I think this sets him up for a really solid 2020.

Also as I type this the Florida senate race is too close to call. Once again Florida is the state that makes the least amount of sense.

Some questions going forward:

Who will be Speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi is not popular and many of the incoming representatives vowed to vote against her speakership. After a somewhat disappointing result for Dems, there might be an increased call for fresh blood. Pelosi is a powerhouse though and has the weight of the establishment behind her.

How does this affect 2020? The GOP margin of victory really hurts the Dem chances of taking the chamber in 2020. The progressives ran good campaigns but still lost. I think chatter about a primary challenger against Trump will really die down now that it's starting to seem like his success in key states (namely Florida) wasn't a fluke. Mueller investigation (and whatever investigations launched by the Dems) might drop some bombshells but I don't see anything hurting Trump. The US is overdue for a recession, that could make a difference. Dems need to be really careful about how they conduct themselves in the House and what their strategy is for the next election.

Will Trump work with the House Democrats? There are initiatives with bipartisan potential. Infrastructure and marijuana legalization, for example. I think it would serve Democrats well to show that they are not an obstruction party and are willing to cooperate on sensible legislation.
 
Damn. Lyin' Ted won. He basically had to sell out his integrity for it though, enlisting the support of a man who accused his father of killing JFK and insulted his wife.

I see the Florida Senate or governor vote has only 0.7% in it. :eek:
 
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