Posted on 04/24/2018 10:09:31 AM PDT by TexasGurl24
Tuesday’s special election in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, in the conservative suburbs outside Phoenix, may reveal the depth of Republicans’ political challenges in 2018. Debbie Lesko, the party’s nominee and a former state senator, is favored to win over Hiral Tipirneni, a Democrat and emergency room doctor, in a district that supported President Trump in 2016 by more than 20 points.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yeah, the media is shifting to the “a close loss is still a win” meme.
The NYT says that Lesko has won.
Fox News just called it for Lesko. The hold rebuilds the R lead in the House to 44 (23 seats would need to flip for the D’s to take control. There are 5 vacancies after tonight; 3 R abd 2 D.
good news!
From the AZ Sec of State: “After the initial upload of early ballot results at 8:00 p.m., the Secretary of State does not expect further polling place results for an hour or more. This website will refresh automatically when new results are available from Maricopa County.”
So - the first posting was at 11 EDT, the next update will not be until after 12 midnight EDT.
In any event, NYT and Fox have both called it.
Called rep with 0 of 143 precincts reporting. No updates since first one on nytimes. The lib tears flow.
Called it for Lesko(R) on Fox
Republicans are not going to get excited about these special elections, especially in dark red districts. The media, including Fox News are trying to sell more Corn Flakes by trying to beat the drum about the narrow margin.
Bottom line is that the Media continue to hate Trump and the professional political operatives are trying to drum up business from both sides. I don’t think that this carries over to the November election.
Trent Franks, the GOP incumbent who resigned this seat, left in disgrace, and scandalized incumbents tend to leave a bad taste in voters’ mouths for electing someone of the same party, which perhaps partially explains the less than enthusiastic margin for Lesko.
If it is, that makes it even better. Blue wave, indeed.
100% of precincts reporting:
R 91,390 Votes (Leading by 9,072)
D 82,318 Votes
Not even close. The blue wave is getting smaller, as if that were possible. Soon it’ll be an undertow.
Yes. Turn out for the election Franks won in 2016 was ~300,000 total votes. Turn out for this one was around ~174,000. Most of the decrease in turnout was by Republicans (a decrease of ~112,000 votes), but Democrats also had a decrease (~10,000 votes). The bottom line, to me, is that 2016 was a presidential election year, and Trump brought out a lot of voters. This time around turnout was less either because voters weren't generally aware of this special election, or weren't motivated to vote because of the Franks scandal or other reasons.
I guess the big question is...will the Trump voters turn out in the 2018 election?
I would hope that the general election will produce more turnout. You know the other side is fired up.
I’m truly hoping that some of the stuff about the Dems and this farce of an investigation of Trump comes out in October. It would be nice for the Republicans to use an “October Surprise” of their own for a change.
There have been at least 8 special elections at this point and several more to go; by my count, the R’s have won 6 of the 8; losing just the one Senate Seat in Alabama and the one House Seat in PA last month. In both cases, the R candidates were flawed, or were defined by their opponents as flawed (AL). In PA, the R candidate had the personality of a tree stump; and he was running against a tall, lanky, energetic young man; and still lost by only 629 votes. The D’s needed to spend every penny of those millions of dollars for that pyrrhic victory - if just 315 people had not changed their minds since the prior election, all they would have is their seat-warmer in AL, who is sure to get blown-out in a bid for re-election.
Yep. 6 of 8 special election R seats to date were retained by R’s. There was a 9th special in CA that was a D seat that the D’s retained. There is one more scheduled special to go prior to the midterms in Ohio’s 12th on August 7 that is an R seat. There are currently 5 open seats after last night in the House. The other 4 do not (yet) have specials scheduled, the ‘special’ for Conyer’s seat in MI is scheduled for the mid-term election day in November, and will appear as a ‘regular’ open seat.
https://ballotpedia.org/Special_elections_to_the_115th_United_States_Congress_(2017-2018)
All the same, the GOP would do better than to nominate either Roy Moore or Luther Strange again. New blood and a new face.
If (hopefully when) Trump goes out and starts campaigning and reminding people of what Pelosi and their crowd want to do, including repealing the Tax cuts etc., and Trump starts pointing out how extreme and crazy the left is, it will ignite the base.
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