Should be interesting to see the outcome:
Republican leadership lowered expectations for the outcome in Tuesday’s North Carolina’s 9th District special election, calling it a “swing district.”
President Donald Trump carried this district by 12 points in 2016, but Republican outside groups have spent more than $6 million on the race, which Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales rates Toss-up.
“You know, the Bishop district is a very tough swing district,” GOP Whip Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday.
Republicans appeared to narrowly win this race last fall. GOP nominee Mark Harris led Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes, but the results were never certified because of allegations of election fraud tied to the Republican’s campaign. Harris opted not to run in the re-do of the election, and state Sen. Dan Bishop won a crowded GOP primary in May.
Recent polling from Inside Elections put McCready ahead of state Sen. Dan Bishop, 46 percent to 42 percent.
Any juicers on the ground there?
randy khan
Only if you don’t cheat.
Baud
I hope not only for a win, but a win by a really wide margin that scares everyone in the GOP to death.
JPL
@Baud: Well hoping never hurts, but it doesn’t help either.
Yarrow
@Baud: This! I would like to see McCready win big. If that happens I’d expect a whole new round of R retirements.
Baud
@JPL: Correct on both points.
Dorothy A. Winsor
What time do the polls close? Can we make any guesses based on turnout?
SiubhanDuinne
John, how’s your hand? Someone said you ended up going back to the ER a day or two later.
(ETA: sorry for the O/T)
Yarrow
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Yarrow: Ooh. Early.
debbie
@Baud:
I want a local GOP official to blame the loss on Trump.
Steven Koetting
NC GOP suing to keep 1 voting district open. They know they lost. They pray for a win. The orange menace will tweet “I was forced to campaign for a loser! And I knew it!”
Khef
NC GOP suing to keep 1 voting district open. They know they lost. They pray for a win. The orange menace will tweet “I was forced to campaign for a loser! And I knew it!”
debit
@Khef: I hope we win it and that we see a wave of retirements afterward.
Elizabelle
I am so grateful that Hurricane Dorian did not deliver a blow like Hurricane Florence last year did (last September 12-15, in fact).
Fingers crossed. Decided to stay home tonight so can watch the results. This is a big election, and I hope McCready has a convincing (and demoralizing to Republicans) win.
It’s got to help that his opponent, Bishop, wrote that horrible bathroom bill that lost North Carolina the basketball tournament and who remembers what else.
Mike in NC
Bishop appears to be your standard do-nothing GOP good old boy. Fat Bastard appeared in ads where he calls McCready “a LIBERAL who wants OPEN BORDERS, and he likes SOCIALISM”. He said this while appearing to be gasping for air.
May he stroke out if Bishop goes down.
Anonymous At Work
Why did the GOP leadership just announce to Republicans in the House that they should retire early? Calling that district “swing” only means that R+12 or less is going to be a tough fight with dubious outcomes, so “secure that Fox News sinecure now.”
And if Democrats win governor or control of either chamber in your state, your ass is grass under re-districting.
Elizabelle
@Mike in NC: Has the bathroom bill been used by either side in campaigning?
You’d mentioned Bishop was a do-nothing good old boy, but boy, did he do something: wikipedia:
Is that haunting him, at all?
He’s a culture warrior.
Jihad media.
J R in WV
The news won’t be clear until the polls close in another 45 minutes or so. I’ve had emails that imply things are looking good for the Dem, number of early voters was thousands of Dems, less than 900 Repugnants.
Won’t hold my breath but optimistic. Hope it’s a landslide for the Democratic Party!
Spent the afternoon on a shopping errand into town. Was 97 while running around, saw on my dashboard on the way home 99 effing degrees!!!
We are so fucked!!!!!!!!
Mike in NC
@Elizabelle: Have not seen any references lately to the infamous bathroom bill. Hopefully the Democrats hang it around his neck.
MJS
I’m really pissed that this election even needs to take place. It shouldn’t be that hard to say, in a two person race, that the one who doesn’t cheat, wins.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV:
Yeah, it’s like that here, we call it Summer.
trnc
@MJS:
It would be one thing if the number of corruptly obtained absentee ballots made the difference, but I don’t think it did so that effectively means the legitimate votes went for the republican. Those voters shouldn’t have their vote nullified over something which they had no idea was happening.
Also, I am really, really, really hoping that McCready wins because, aside from a win for us, that would be a repudiation of republican corruption.
japa21
Has it been called yet?//
MoeLarryAndJesus
@Baud:
Literally in some cases.
MisterForkbeard
@trnc: I’m actually of two minds about this.
If a candidate cheats horrendously and does a ton of illegal stuff BUT that their margin of victory is larger than the amounts you can prove voted, I’d STILL want that position given to the runner-up or (ideally) that candidate gets thrown in jail and the election is held immediately about a week later.
There needs to be some punishment for cheating beyond a fine.
Elizabelle
@MJS: Yeah, I don’t like that the GOP got a complete do-over with a fresher, nonimplicated candidate (albeit a whacko). Plus, $6 million plus in outside GOP spending.
FWIW, the cheating candidate seems to have cheated the previous Republican incumbent out of the primary that year.
Fingers crossed. Come on McCready.
Elizabelle
Checking the Charlotte Observer, no front webpage election results yet, but some woman has apparently gone Lorena Bobbit on her husband, after tying him up. A middle aged white woman. Would guess that local story might get … legs.
japa21
According to FTFNYT, McCready is up 9 points with 9% in.
Another Scott
https://er.ncsbe.gov/?election_dt=09/10/2019&county_id=0&office=FED&contest=0
Cheers,
Scott.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Elizabelle:
From the Observer, a new story:
Fingers crossed. Mecklenburg County in recent years has become increasingly blue.
japa21
With 16% reporting, McCready now with 13% lead.
chopper
@Another Scott:
right now it’s 58D-41R with 20% precincts reporting. not saying that’s gonna stick, but even a 10 point D spread would be pretty fucking brutal.
chopper
@chopper:
btw i was looking at the wrong race. ignore.
NC doc
I guess I am on the ground. I live in the NC-9. Registered Independent/UnAffiliiated
Totally tired of the cheating that’s gone on in NC in the 19 years I’ve lived here. This is big.
So is the recent NC court decision allowing my vote to count. WOW. It’s been a long time.
The Mc Greedy ads were over the top. How did Dan Bishop vote on those laws? Probably YES. Republicans calling someone Liberal and greedy is Rich.
Carolina Dave
24% in. McCready up by 5%. Suburbs and others sick óf the. Trump BS. Could be a huge repudiation of the Orange meanace. And bathroom god botherers.
Yarrow
52% McCready (D) – 47.5% Bishop (R) with 25.2% reporting.
evap
50.5% McCready, 48.9% Bishop with 36% reporting. Does anybody know if outstanding votes are more likely Dem or Repub?
JPL
@evap: What happens is that even if he doesn’t win, we feel like losers. The reality is that the district is a big republican district and it was drawn that way. Ossoff lost when he ran in my district and I never thought a dem would win, but now I have Lucy McBath. We should never feel like losers. Close in republican districts is a starting point.
japa21
@evap: McCready strongest county Mecklenburg has only 2% reporting, Bishops strongest, Union, has 73% reporting.
Cheryl Rofer
The district went +11% for Trump. At the moment, it’s too close to call. That’s a win.
Another Scott
@japa21: Thanks for that. Bishop is up by about 500 votes at the moment on the NCSBE site. Around here, the big population centers come in later, so fingers crossed.
Cheers,
Scott.
MJS
How much of Mecklenburg County is actually in the district?
J R in WV
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
No, no, you obviously don’t understand. It doesn’t get that hot here!!
I did grow up 1800 feet higher than where I live now. Or so. My dad never got A/C in his cars, didn’t need it. Didn’t have central air in the house, didn’t need it. Now, I do have central air in our house, because it is hotter here than where I grew up — 1800 feet of elevation will do that.
But 99 degrees is a whole different egg, my friend. It’s a humid, choking kind of heat. And I was running errands, carrying heavy parcels out to the car, sweating! SO SAD!!!
Anonymous At Work
Bishop 49.9% to McCready 48.5% with 55% in. Few hundred votes.
Not sure about what precincts are still out.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@J R in WV: I know, we had the monsoon flow along with the 105 degree heat, it was lovely.
Eolirin
@Anonymous At Work: Mecklenburg has the most outstanding votes, and seems to be breaking fairly strongly for McCready, but I don’t know what the distribution of the remaining precincts are. The vote gap is narrowing a bit right now though.
Dorothy A. Winsor
This looks way too close.
Eolirin
Mecklenburg needs to provide more than a 2.5k additional margin for McCready, I have no idea if that’s likely or possible.
Redshift
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from years of waiting for returns to come in, it’s that no one but the campaign professionals really has any idea of whether it’s close or not. They know where they need to get votes from and whether those results are in yet or not, and we don’t. That’s even more the case in a single congressional district.
Try not to get too caught up in the counting. Though they play it like a horse race, it’s not. All the votes have already happened, what’s happening between when the polls close and when the final results are in is just quirks of counting order.
japa21
Important to remember that under normal circumstances, this election would have been called for the GOP hours ago.
J R in WV
@japa21:
This is good advice. When I get up tomorrow, or when I get up with insomnia at 4 am, the count will be over, except for the litigation and criminal investigations. And then we will know who won the first round.
Later on, much later, we’ll know who was seated in the House.
MJS
Since this appears to be trending away from us, I’m going to exhibit some bitterness and say, as a white, somewhat old, person, what the fuck is wrong with old white people? Yes, I know this is a solidly Republican district, but these aren’t ordinary times. There are anchors on Fox fucking News that are calling the president a liar. There are any number of Republican pundits calling him deranged. But these fucking idiots vote for someone who idolizes Trump. It makes me sick to my stomach. This shit shouldn’t even be close.
japa21
Should point out that there is a reason this hasn’t been called. The precincts in Mecklenburg must be friendly toward McCready or it already would have been called.
japa21
Called for Bishop
Ruckus
@MJS:
It’s called racism, plain and simple. It probably has an element of stupid there but it’s major reasoning is racism. There may be also an element of conservatism involved. Conservatism about maintaining the white race.
Elizabelle
@japa21: Oh no.
AliceBlue
I think McCready underperformed pretty badly. According to the liveblog over at DKos, he carried Richmond County the first time but lost it by five points this time around.
Elizabelle
Well, I hope the Republicans and those who did not vote get what they wanted. Good and hard. Wondering what the margin is.
North Carolina is such a beautiful state, but will break your heart.
Another Scott
Supposedly Donnie won by 12 points, right? The spread here was 50.8 / 48.6 or 2.2%, so we still made up ~ 10%. That’s been the step-up for lots and lots of these contested special elections. If Democrats do 10% points better in 2020 than they did in 2016, then there is going to be a massive, massive wave election.
Don’t lose hope. We still have to fight for every vote we can get, but things are looking very good for 2020.
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: Yes. Eyes on the prize. 2020.
cmorenc
@AliceBlue: A far higher total # of voters turned out in the NC-9 Congressional election in 2018 than in the 2019 special election:
2018: with 100% in:
McReady (D) 136,341, Harris (R) 139,246, Scott (L) 5,130 TOTAL: 280,717 (inc. L); 275,587 (just D +R)
2019: with 99% in:
McReady (D) 90,824, Bishop (R) 94,984 TOTAL: 185,808 – just 67,4% of 2018 turnout
…but McReady’s % of electorate who did turn out was nearly identical in both 2018 and 2019, so the loss isn’t simply because fewer Ds turned out in a special one-off election rather than a regular congressional election. It appears the R’s support fell off by a near-identical % 2019 vs 2018.
If the Ds capture either NC state house in 2020, the prospects of which greatly improved with the state court’s invalidating of the GOP’s state district gerrymandering – the 9th district will likely be redrawn such as to be less favorable to the GOP in 2022 and beyond.
MJS
@Another Scott: I try to be optimistic, but the fact is that even with all we learned about Trump just since November of 2018, the Democrat got a slightly lower percentage today than in November. Worse, approximately 48,000 people who voted for McCready in November couldn’t be fucking bothered to cast a vote in this election. He got about 138,000 votes in November and is going to end up with about 90,000 today. That is absolutely pathetic and I hope everyone of those 48,000 fuck-faces suffers in some way because of their inaction.
cmorenc
@MJS: OTOH, apx the same number and % of asshats who voted for Harris (R) in 2018 couldn’t be bothered to turn themselves out in the 2019 special election as the fuck-face sufferers who voted for McReady in 2018 but couldn’t be bothered to turn themselves out in the 2019 special election. And so the apathy was equally distributed on both sides, FWIW.
MJS
@cmorenc: It’s inexcusable that 48,000 previous Dem voters decided to sit this one out. Imagine the headlines had even half of them showed up to vote. Instead we’ll get Trump “comeback” stories and a thousand more Trump voter profiles.
MJS
@cmorenc: Dem voters have no reason to be apathetic. The opportunity to put one more roadblock in Trump’s way, and another blight on his record should have been enough motivation to vote, if kids in prison, mass shootings, etc. aren’t enough.
Richard Guhl
Charlie Cook of the Cook Report says tonight’s results means that about 31 more GOP House seats are now in play to be flipped. We should see more GOP Congress persons head for the doors.