GA-06 Special Congressional Election

So today ends the campaign of the costliest congressional race in American history. The race is for Tom Price's seat who became the Secretary of the HHS. Democrat Jon Ossoff is up against Republican Karen Handel for what is being looked at as a early referendum on the Trump presidency.

Mr. Ossoff got 48% total in the first round so not enough to win outright, thus it went to a run-off and here we are today. He needs to somehow peel away at least 3% of GOP voters to beat his opponent. He has attempted to do this by positioning himself as a moderate Democrat, an example being that he doesn't want to tax the rich more and is against single-payer healthcare. We will see if it pays off.

Polling has Ms. Handel with a 2% lead as of today and supposedly boosted by a very inflammatory ad that essentially compares Ossoff and his supporters to the baseball practice shooter.

Live NYT election tracker: https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/georgia-congressional-runoff-ossoff-handel

GA-06 has gone Republican since 1979. The result of this election could be an early indicator as to how the 2018 midterm elections will go.

Mr. Ossoff has a huge amount of support from outside sources, to include Hollywood stars backing him and millions from outside Georgia pouring in because of how important this race is for those that are opposed to the president.

If he wins, it will be interesting to see how 2018 goes, since people may see it as a sign of hope for retaking the majority, and then follow it up with possible impeachment proceedings against Trump. Also, people would push his victory as a sign that other Republicans better start distancing themselves from Trump if they want a chance at being reelected.

If he loses, his supporters will be upset, and they will just focus more on the upcoming elections anyway, but with a much weaker argument in telling other Republican lawmakers that their support of Trump may cost them next year.

Yeah, it seems like people are going to draw something one way or the other from the result.

It is crazy that a Democrat is even competitive in a district like this.

Ossoff may end up losing by 1%. A loss is a loss, but even a 1% loss means that the Republicans underperformed by 10%, which is about in-line with most of the other special elections so far. That means that Republicans who won their seats by 1-8% points should start shitting their pants for 2018.

Never underestimate the gullibility of the red state voter. I fully expect them to vote against their own interests with Handel. What's even more telling is that these once deep red states are becoming competitive.

Did Ossoff lose yet?

With an estimated 66 percent of the vote counted, Handel has an edge of nearly 10,000 votes in her bid to replace Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who held the seat before joining President Donald Trump's Cabinet. Handel was at 51.4 percent; Ossoff at 48.6 percent.

Hehe, don't matter that this is a +20 R district and Handel might win by 1%, it will be spun by many Republicans as a complete win.

Bring on some more of those "so when do Democrats actually start winning?" articles.

Come on Slate, I need it.

I win for gender equality. Boom!

So when do Democrats actually start winning?

This election was over when Ossuf didn't get 50% however many months ago

South Carolina's 5th also had a special election and the Republican won 51.1% to 47.9%.

Don't tease me!

Soon, they will take the House in 18'.

Yup, any Republican who doesn't realize that these races are so damned close is in for a rude awakening in 2018 or 2020, especially with the Trump administration imploding daily.

@R3FURBISHED said:

This election was over when Ossuf didn't get 50% however many months ago

Pretty much. It seemed like Ossuf could have won until you realized how many GOP contenders there were relative to the Democratic side in this election.

Oh well.

@drunk_pi said:

@R3FURBISHED said:

This election was over when Ossuf didn't get 50% however many months ago

Pretty much. It seemed like Ossuf could have won until you realized how many GOP contenders there were relative to the Democratic side in this election.

Oh well.

Ahh, same excuse as with the presidential election.

If you lose you can always blame it on to many candidates.

But a good win for the republicans and if anything this shows just how divided the country is and that there is a 0% chance of any republicans going to the democrats side.

And if i recall there is a lot of democrats in Trumpland , so if this continues the divide will make sure Trump´s republicans stay in power and perhaps gain seats.

Seems to be a pattern emerging lately.

Democrats = Losers

Tying every democrat congressional candidate to Nancy Pelosi seems to be working for the repubs.

Maybe the dems should consider some new, younger, leadership.

For the Dems to win they need to get people to want to vote for them not against Trump. Hillary's campaign was based on that flaw.

@tjandmia: Hey, give them some credit. We haven't heard from then in a few days

Well, tell that to the democrats and CNN

Some of their complaints iv heard is that the democrats up for election did not focus enough on Trump and that a vote on them would be a vote against Trump and Republicans.

The left will try to spin this defeat into a moral victory (even though a 4% loss is not close) but until a moral victory allows one to vote in Congress it's just bunk.

70% chance eh. Election prediction take another hit. Stop over polling Democrats to influence the masses you dolts.

While it isn't a complete win for Republicans, it wasn't a huge win for Democrats either in their quest to rebuke the president, when you consider that they outspent Jon Ossoff's opponent several times over and had several big names from outside of the district backing him.

Ossoff received almost 24 million in contributions versus 4.5 million in contributions that Karen Handel received, and the vast majority of the contributions for Ossoff came from California and New York. In addition to that, several celebrities jumped on Ossoff's side, to include Samuel L. Jackson recording a radio commercial and Alyssa Milano offering free rides to voters.

While it was closer than previous races, it was viewed by some in that area as Hollywood trying to buy the election as a giant middle finger to the president, and when they lost the election, they tried to take it as a moral victory. The real victors are the media stations that collected all of those advertisement dollars.

Whatever message Ossoff had was greatly overshadowed by outside sources telling Georgia voters who to vote for and not making it a secret that they only wanted him to win to spite Trump and possibly get one vote closer to impeachment.

The Democrats just don't get it. People are fed up with the Hollywood elite telling others how to vote, how to live their lives, etc.., When these dolts left their comfy safety zone of California, they learned what the real world thinks. Apparently they didn't take anything (except whining) from the Presidential Election last November. Putting these over-paid make-believe performers as a voice is not helping.

Yeah. It was wrong for democrats to spend a huge amount of money on one district that had like around 50% chance of flipping to them. Looking at results in other congressional districts that had special elections to like SC-5, KS-4 and MT-AL it does look like the democrats are doing better then expected in the trump era. And republicans should not be bragging about winning the special elections in this district by single digit margins. It's still really bad for them to be winning these districts by under 10% or in some cases by under 5%.At this point anywere from 15 to possibly even 50 congressional districts can flip to the democrats in 2018. I wasn't even expecting Ossoff to win GA-6 but to make it close.The republicans are probably panicking in private right now over some of the recent special election results.

Where are you seeing this 70% chance...? This race was close the entire time and even then Handel was predicted to win.

Stop taking pills to heart. You people will never learn.

Donald Trump is so bad that he's causing races in heavily gerrymandered districts that Republicans used to win by 20+ points to be neck and neck, and only after 5 months. LOL.

The GOP was expected to win so it's no surprise. Ignoring the 'game changer' bullshit being thrown around by the democratic party (inflating hopes and ignoring reality), this district went red by 23 points which is the real point to take away. Seeing these historically red districts win by narrowing gaps is where people will focus for the 2018 midterms.

Money is not the issue. What is the issue is the hollywood elite believing their opinion is worth more than one of Joe Schmo. Such an approach failed miserably during in November and it is still failing today and I honestly believe such ill feeling resonate with voters.

As you can see in this discussion a number of people think they are turning lemons into lemonade with the "only winning by X points" but in reality they are just trying to make the loss into something more bearable.

Ummm, NYT's Upshot had it exactly as a toss up. Lets not make it now like everyone knew Handel would win.

Anyways,

@perfect_blue: That was Nate Silver's prediction from a few days ago.

Where? Can you link it? I'm looking for it and can't find anything resembling what you posted.

Democrats need to change their game. Instead of basing their campaigns around attacking Trump, they need to re-focus on policies that make them attractive in the first place.

Thanks for that.

It seems like his prediction became a toss up the closer the election got since Handel was then leading in the polls.

It's a red state. You can't base anything on that....though it was a close race which may be cause for concern for the reps.

Link to the contenders of the 6th district special election.

As you can see, there were many GOP contenders and a divided vote.

Yes. This. After 2016, it baffles me that Pelosi is still in charge. Don't get me wrong, I'll keep voting for Democrats, but they are trying very hard to learn nothing.

The closeness may be a matter of it being a special election. Not as many people willing to go to the effort to vote when only one race on the line. I live in Pompeo's district and I didn't bother to vote in the special. I knew Estes, the repub, would win and just couldn't work up the enthusiasm to go vote. So I'm not sure I'd base much on the narrower margins in these special elections.

One thing is for sure, the dems have been on a pretty big losing slide since 2008.

Congratulations to the Penguins. Back to back Stanley cups. Pretty cool.

Apathy helps Reps though as they are the party most likely to vote as opposed to Dems which aren't. So that's not a win for the Reps either.

Not sure that's a universal truth.

Seems to me that enthusiasm and apathy ebb and flow.

To be clear, I don't have a dog in this fight. I hate the entire political establishment. These party-approved republicans winning doesn't excite me. They'll either be ineffective or actually expand government power. But I do get a kick out of watching the democraps, and their willing lap dogs in the mainstream media squirm and twist when their wishful thinking is dashed on the rocks of reality.

If apathy is helping Republicans win elections, then what are Democrats doing to change that? Or are they just going to keep repeating the same old #nevertrump and #resist hashtags, while drafting celebrities to tell all of the so-called idiots from red states to go blue and going nuts when they decide to stay red?

Maybe they should consider using more time to tell the voters how they will improve the country, rather than telling voters how bad President Trump and the rest of the GOP is, or how if you go red then you are a racist, sexist bigot. Not saying that Hillary Clinton and other Democrats didn't focus on how they felt they would be better, but their policy messages paled in comparison to their message of how bad Trump would be if he was elected and had a majority in Congress.

Considering that President Obama won in 2008 with 69.5 million votes, what happened to cause Clinton to get 3.6 million less votes eight years later with a larger voting population? Trump holds the record of the most votes received for the Republican candidate, but he only got 944,000 more votes than George W. Bush got in the 2004 election, the last election a Republican won the popular vote.

If Democrats really outnumber Republicans, maybe we can start blaming the people that decided to stay home because of apathy, instead of getting mad at the people that actually did manage to show up to vote for their preferred candidate. Democratic apathy isn't going to hurt the Republicans as long as they are the ones that make their way to the polls while the other party stays home because the candidate with a D behind their name didn't make it worth their time.