Flipping the 21 Trump-Obama districts continues to be an important sign of whether 2018’s Blue Wave has substance.
The GOP is now whining about ranked choice voting.
21 U.S. House seats fit in the middle of the Venn diagram between “districts carried by Barack Obama in 2012” and “districts carried by Donald Trump in 2016.” These districts aren’t quite as fertile for Democratic gains this year as Romney-Clinton districts, but they are nonetheless a competitive batch of seats…
fivethirtyeight.com/...
Axios had it this way in September 2018:
Why it matters: These races are less favorable to Democrats than "Romney-Clinton" districts, per FiveThirtyEight, but picking up some of them is crucial to controlling the House after November.
Of the 21, nine are held by Democrats and 12 by Republicans. Only five of them favor Republicans, 10 favor Democrats, and six are considered toss-ups.
- The GOP has a shot at snatching two of those Democratic-held districts, per FiveThirtyEight's model. Both are in Minnesota (the 1st and 8th districts), which are open seats that Trump won by 15+ points in the 2016 election.
- Four GOP-held districts, all in New York, look like favorable Republican territory according to this week's model. A combination of out-raising their Democratic challengers, winning their 2016 elections by double digits, and running in "some of the state’s Trumpiest corners," as FiveThirtyEight writes, puts them in a good position seven weeks out from the midterms.
- Three are now "likely Democratic" — Minnesota's 2nd, Iowa's 1st, and New Jersey's 11th districts. FiveThirtyEight notes internal polling, House Ethics Committee investigations, and lousy fundraising gives Democrats the advantage in these races.
Remember how Trump claimed the 2018 midterm result was a total GOP victory last week. The devil’s triangle is in the details as an analysis of key shifted districts could provide further granular evidence of the 2016 perfect storm.
Unhingery continues:
So much lying and disinformation from Agent Orange #FirstTweets this morning, returning to old memes and projecting other worries. Repetition doesn’t make any of it better, like not understanding what a server is, that Mueller was appointed by GW Bush, and that all that screaming and shouting comes from Trump’s inability to answer those written questions from Mueller. And then there’s the meaningless charge that simply because their employees donate to Democrats, Trump claims bias at Facebook, Google, and Twitter.