Monday, June 19, 2017

I THINK KAREN HANDEL'S GOING TO WIN

FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten:



He's referring to this, from the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group:



I know -- it's just one poll. And Trafalgar has only a C rating from FiveThirtyEight. On the other hand, Trafalgar called the election for Trump, predicting wins in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Nate Silver looks at the overall polling and tweets:



(Two other recent polls show the race tied.)

Josh Marshall tweets:



That's the way it usually goes, right? The most reprehensible Republican ads routinely work. The Willie Horton ad. The Jesse Helms "Hands" ad. So why wouldn't this work?



The bigger issue is that even though this is a district full of highly educated voters, the kind of district in which Donald Trump ran much worse than Mitt Romney, it's still a Republican district. That means it's full of white people who've listened to nearly forty years of Democrat-bashing from Ronald Reagan, the religious right, talk radio, Fox News, and GOP elected officials and admakers. These are voters who believe the worst stereotypes of Democrats. It's an uphill battle for any Democrat to overcome those stereotypes. That Ossoff has done so even temporarily is remarkable.

For decades, heartland whites have been conditioned to despise the Democratic Party, so they nearly always believe the lowest of negative ads about Democrats, and nearly always vote for the GOP in the end. Ossoff might win, but I'll be surprised.

And I hope the Ossoff campaign can prove me wrong.

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