2016 elections - because it's never too early

[11B4V]

Oooh please, challenge me at the poll.  Give me a reason to go to jail over the right to vote and to maul another human being at the same time.

Of course, I'm white so I won't be challenged at all.

No shit.

[jimmy olsen]

https://twitter.com/gnrosenberg/status/785932015967301632/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Woah. Popular Rightwing blog, Ace of Spades HQ just endorsed Paul Ryan's Democratic opponent. GOP down-ballot apocalypse brewing.

[mongers]

https://twitter.com/gnrosenberg/status/785932015967301632/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Woah. Popular Rightwing blog, Ace of Spades HQ just endorsed Paul Ryan's Democratic opponent. GOP down-ballot apocalypse brewing.

Guess you gotta rebuild from somewhere, so hoping for Ryan to return with a thumping majority is a start.

[derspiess]

Oooh please, challenge me at the poll.  Give me a reason to go to jail over the right to vote and to maul another human being at the same time.

Of course, I'm white so I won't be challenged at all.

  Nobody in his right mind would challenge your vote.

Anyway what is your precinct?

[Ed Anger]

Oooh please, challenge me at the poll.  Give me a reason to go to jail over the right to vote and to maul another human being at the same time.

Of course, I'm white so I won't be challenged at all.

  Nobody in his right mind would challenge your vote.

Anyway what is your precinct?

Spicy needs that for the Trumpenreich-SA battalion's Tom Tom.

[LaCroix]

"if I don't win, it'll be the single biggest waste of time, energy, money..."

[alfred russel]

A fun conspiracy theory at first, but now very doubtful...his wealth/fortune was significantly tied to his "brand", which after this election, is basically mud.

Well, except to deplorables. 

I could even be convinced it was true at first, but if there is one thing that Trump is consistently for, it is Trump.

Right now he has so alienated the left of the country that even saying after the election, "surprise--that was all a huge plot to destroy the republicans!" won't get him back into their good graces. It will only alienate the deplorables. Those are now his people, and for the foreseeable future the only allies he will have.

[CountDeMoney]

Oooh please, challenge me at the poll.  Give me a reason to go to jail over the right to vote and to maul another human being at the same time.

Of course, I'm white so I won't be challenged at all.

  Nobody in his right mind would challenge your vote.

Anyway what is your precinct?

Fort Apache, The Bronx.

[jimmy olsen]

So the threshold of a wave election that will flip the House is 8-10%.

Given depressed GOP turnout and the fact that some voters will vote Trump but not vote down ballot Republican means this is possible.


http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/senate-house-dems-opportunity-trump-tapes-42734396

Senate, House Dems See New Opportunity From Trump Tapes

By erica werner and alan fram, associated press

WASHINGTON — Oct 11, 2016, 6:05 PM ET

Democrats trying to retake the House and Senate see new opportunity from the tape of Donald Trump talking about women in crude, predatory terms. The footage has already prompted ads in at least four House races as well as the hard-fought New Hampshire Senate contest, and may be giving new life to Democratic efforts to tie Republican candidates to the GOP presidential nominee.

Such efforts have had mixed results so far, and it remains to be seen how much the new audio and video tape of Trump talking about groping and kissing women will change that. Several GOP Senate candidates in top-tier races, including New Hampshire, announced over the weekend they were pulling support from Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan declared Monday that he will not campaign for or defend the nominee, giving House Republicans permission to dump him.

But officials in both parties say they will not know the extent of the damage to Trump, or the impact on down-ballot races, until polling results filter in later this week and next.

For now, though, the reaction is optimism on the part of Democrats, and concern from Republicans.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told upbeat House Democrats on a conference call Tuesday that if the election were held today, Democrats would take back the House — although few are quite that bullish, given the Republicans' 246-186 seat advantage.

"We are expanding our universe of opportunities," Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said on the same conference call. Lujan pointed to new polling showing Democrats had opened up the biggest advantage on the question of which party voters preferred to control Congress since Republicans shut down the government two years ago.

The comments were confirmed by a Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the private conference call.

In an open House seat in Wisconsin, Democrat Tom Nelson is airing an ad using the new Trump audio and attacking opponent Mike Gallagher, who's been favored to win.

An ad supporting GOP Rep. Darrell Issa's Democratic challenger in San Diego, Doug Applegate, uses repeated clips from the Trump tape along with photos showing a smiling Issa clasping hands with Trump.

In an open seat in Pennsylvania, an ad by Democrat Christina Hartman shows some of the footage along with clips of Republican Lloyd Smucker praising Trump. "Trump and Smucker, wrong for women, wrong for us," the ad says.

In Minnesota, Democratic challenger Terri Bonoff talks to the camera in an ad hitting GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen for not distancing himself from the Republican presidential candidate until now.

And in the New Hampshire Senate race, Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan uses the new Trump footage, and a clip of Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte saying during a debate that she would "absolutely" view Trump as a role model. Ayotte later said she misspoke, and on Saturday she withdrew her endorsement of Trump.

The Trump tape "gives us an opportunity with any voter who happens to be female," said Alixandria Lapp, executive director of the House Majority PAC, which helps Democratic candidates. She later amended the remark to include "anyone who is human and decent" and added that the video "potentially depresses some Republican enthusiasm for going out to vote on Election Day."

Republicans say that the potential for depressed turnout is one of the most concerning potential impacts of the tape. Center-right voters could just sit out the election and the few remaining undecided voters could all shift to the Democrats. Democrats need to pick up five seats to take back control of the Senate, or four if they retain White House control since the vice president casts tie-breaking votes.

Republican Senate candidates have tried all year to build their campaigns into insulated operations that can withstand the controversy of the day created by Trump. There's evidence that the strategy has been working, as Republicans in Ohio, Nevada, Florida, Pennsylvania and elsewhere have been running ahead of Trump. But this latest controversy may test the limits of the GOP approach.

"The Democrats have invested millions of dollars trying to pin Donald Trump on our Senate candidates and I think they've had very little to show for it so far," said Steven Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC focused on Senate races. A key concern now, Law said, is "whether there is a decline in voter enthusiasm on our side that could obviously have down-ticket ramifications."

Josh Holmes, a GOP consultant close to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said it would be "difficult but possible" for Republicans to retain Senate control if Trump is running behind Hillary Clinton by as much as 11 percentage points, the margin in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted after the Trump comments came out but before the Sunday night debate.

But Republicans agree there is a limit to how far ahead of the GOP nominee their candidates can run.

And if Trump's support continues to fall, it could encourage a spate of GOP House and Senate candidates to run ads touting themselves and a Republican Congress as the best way to check a Clinton presidency.

[jimmy olsen]

Looks like Trump has no shot at North Carolina if this is true.

Click here to look at the graphs.
http://www.insight-us.org/blog/ncs-2016-voter-turnout-through-10-october/

Part 2: Turnout Trends Through 10 October 2016

Again, please bear in mind: it's still early days yet.

Completed and signed absentee-by-mail (ABM) ballots returned to the State Board of Elections reached 25,576 on October 10th. That's down – by a lot – from the corresponding period in 2012 (just 79% of 2012's action):

Viewed in isolation, this result should probably be taken with a grain of salt, since it might reflect as much (or even more) about the mechanics of when and how the Board of Elections tabulates returned ballots as it does the actual rate at which voted ballots are being submitted. But an abundance of other evidence suggests that the lag in ABM voting this year is real – and offers an explanation for why that's the case.

Republican Voters are MIA

North Carolina's registered Republicans simply aren't voting (so far, anyway) in anything like the numbers they typically post. This is surely the most bizarre result we've ever seen in decades of poll-watching...but then, by any reasonable criterion this is also the most bizarre election year in modern history.

ABM voting is typically the almost exclusive domain of Republicans (as the red bars in the figure above – for 2012 – illustrate). Democrats typically prefer in-person Early Voting (which begins on October 20th this year). But this election, while both Dems and independents have posted modest upticks relative to 2012 (107% and 106%, respectively), Republicans are voting at just 55% of their 2012 numbers. And this 'Trump slump' fully accounts for the overall decline in ABM voting so far.

It's hard to imagine a reasonable scenario in which the mere mechanics of vote tabulation by the Board of Elections could yield numbers like these, short of bizarre conspiracy theories.

Other North Carolina poll-watchers, including HuffPo, CNN, and the New York Times, have already reported that applications for ABM ballots by Republicans are down substantially this year in North Carolina (by 27%, according to the Times). As we show here, Tar Heel state Republicans are lagging even worse in terms of actually voting their ballots.


This is a trend that should scare the dickens out of the state's incumbent Republican candidates including Gov. Pat McCrory, U.S. Senator Richard Burr, a gaggle of state legislators – and, of course, Donald Trump.

The Missing Republicans Are a Statewide Phenomenon

Might there be a simple (and boring) explanation for these bizarre results – perhaps something as simple as a glitch in ballot tabulation in one or two heavily Republican counties?

Nope, that's not it. The map below compares voted ballot numbers by county across the state, for both registered Republicans (top panel) and Democrats (bottom panel). Counties in red are reporting decreased numbers of ballots so far from members of the indicated parties relative to 2012, while those in green are reporting increased numbers. And with the single exception of tiny Clay County, the board is red for Republicans pretty much statewide, while Democrats are seeing increased ballots in many counties, particularly in the state's midsection where most of its voters live (Wake, Chatham, Orange, Durham, and Mecklenburg counties).

Is this the harbinger of a Democratic landslide to come, or just a momentary blip on the screen? Join us here again every Tuesday and Thursday, and we'll just see about that.

[FunkMonk]

A couple of the Reps have rescinded their rescinding of their endorsement for Trump. 

Truly, he owns the GOP now. It is his, now and forever.

[CountDeMoney]

Bet you didn't think anyone could stretch out a Hitler's-last-days-in-the-bunker miniseries for a month straight, did you?

[FunkMonk]

Bet you didn't think anyone could stretch out a Hitler's-last-days-in-the-bunker miniseries for a month straight, did you?

He'll stretch it out for a decade, at the least.

[Admiral Yi]

He'll contest, but in the court of public opinion, not the courts themselves. He's simply too cheap, and the RNC will want to move on so they won't pay for it, either.

I think after he loses he's going to find politics suddenly very uninteresting.

[jimmy olsen]

Trump allegedly called the (white) sound guy on the Apprentice a fucking monkey. I really can't wait until the tapes get leaked.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/emaoconnor/trump-called-mic-guy-fucking-monkey?utm_term=.oh0B72RwrD#.tuXO3640vX