Republicans Win Special Election In Wisconsin and Are Poised to Win in California

They held a red seat in Wisconsin, and flipped a blue seat in California.

Or at least that it is how it looks now. They're still counting, and perhaps creating, votes.

This was FiveThirtyEight two days ago:

In California, Mike Garcia (R) has a lead over Chrsity Smith (D) for the throuplist Katie Hill's old seat. Katie Hill's old seat was itself wrested from a Republican -- but the district is blue. Hillary Clinton won over 50% of its votes in 2016.

And it looks like Mike Garcia took it, and not by a little, either.

Cry moar, bitchtits:

former Navy combat pilot built a double-digit lead in the fight for an open U.S. House seat north of Los Angeles, positioning Republicans to capture a Democratic-held congressional district in California for the first time in over two decades.

Political newcomer Mike Garcia had a 12-point edge over Democratic Assemblywoman Christy Smith in Tuesday’s special election for the swing 25th District. An unknown number of ballots remained uncounted and Los Angeles County, where most of them are located, was not expected to update its tally until Friday.

California routinely counts large numbers of votes after election day, and mail ballots can arrive as late as Friday and still be counted if they were postmarked by election day.

With about 143,000 ballots tallied -- almost all of them mail-in ballots -- Garcia had 56%. All voters received mailed ballots because of the coronavirus outbreak, though a sprinkling of polling places were available for those who wanted to vote in person.

In Wisconsin, the Republican is already declared the winner. Tom Tiffany (R) retained the seat of retiring Congressman Sean Duffy.

Tom Tiffany, a state senator endorsed by President Donald Trump, easily won a special congressional election Tuesday in a heavily conservative, rural Wisconsin district, cheering Republicans even as Democrats argued the victory revealed vulnerabilities for the president among his base.

Tiffany's win over Democrat Tricia Zunker in northern Wisconsin’s 7th District comes in the state’s second election amid the coronavirus pandemic the past five weeks. Tiffany will replace former reality TV star Sean Duffy, a Republican who retired in September.

Sean Duffy has not been a "reality star" since the fucking 1990s. But do go on, AP.

Do you know Fox's Melissa Francis played one of the Ingles daughters (no, not one of the ones you know, the other one) on Little House on the Prairie? Well she did.

But no one calls her "former Little House on the Prairie actress" as a main identifier. Because she's been doing other things for quite a while.

The district has been vacant since Duffy's retirement.

Trump won Wisconsin by less than a point, but carried the district by 20 points, in 2016. Tiffany’s win over Zunker was about 6 points less than that, based on preliminary results. Tiffany rejected Democrats' argument that the smaller margin was a sign that Trump's support was waning.

"Any time you lose by 14 points, I don't think that's a moral victory," Tiffany said. "This is a decisive victory here."

Well, as for Trump winning the district by 20 and this guy "only" winning by 14:

Well, Trump wasn't on the ballot this time, was he? Yes, a Republican Trump endorsed is a rough proxy for Trump, but it's not the same as Trump.

A lot of Trump voters are not Republicans.

Little secret: Republican GOTV efforts in 2016 were often designed to reduce Trump's chance to win by not calling Trump voters because a lot of Trump voters were not reliable Republican voters, and hence could possibly throw downticket races to the Democrats.

For example, if a county was pro-Trump by say 65% to 35%, but was about 45% Republican 55% Democrat, GOP vendors would deliberately suppress GOTV efforts in the area so as not to turn out Democrats.

All so we could keep Conservative Tiger Warriors like Deep State Simp and corrupt insider-trader Richard Burr.

What a prize. Yayyyy.

I'm glad we gambled on giving away North Carolina.

True fact. I know someone in the biz who was spitting nails at the GOP's appointed vendors actively sabotaging the pro-Trump efforts they were making.

So yeah, a rough proxy is not the same thing as The Same Thing. Shut the fuck up, Democrats.

posted by Ace at 11:59 AM

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