Watch Live: Virginia Governor"s Race A Virtual Dead Heat As Results Start To Pour In

Update (7:45pm EST):  With just 21% of votes counted, the New York Times shows a virtual dead heat in Virginia between Democrat Ralph Northam (49.4%) and Republican Ed Gillespie (49.3%). 

Here"s a live feed of the results:

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After a hard-fought campaign, one which turned downright vicious in recent weeks, Virginia"s race for governor is now just hours away from being decided with polls set to close at 7pm EST.  The race pits Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D) against former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie (R) and will undoubtedly be spun as a referendum on the Trump administration no matter which side emerges victorious later this evening. 

According to The Hill, given that this is an off-year race, strategists in both camps expect a low-turnout affair in which only about 41% of the state’s electorate is expected to cast a ballot.  And while small variations in voter turnout assumptions can have monumental impacts on polls (in addition to the already built-in liberal bias), the Real Clear Politics average shows a slight advantage for Northam headed into tonight.

Of course, polls showed a similar advantage for Jon Ossoff heading into Georgia"s special election earlier this year and we all know how that turned out (see:  The Russians Do It Again: Democrats Get Crushed In Georgia Election Despite 7x Spending Advantage).

Not surprisingly, at least not in today"s political climate, Virginia"s governor race started off as a contest between two fairly moderate candidates but has quickly morphed into what a former Republican congressman described as a choice between "an MS-13 member and a Nazi."

Northam’s campaign has spent the final weeks before Election Day tying Gillespie to President Trump, and Democratic outside groups have portrayed Gillespie supporters as white supremacists sympathetic to the white nationalists who rallied in Charlottesville.

 

Gillespie has accused Northam of voting to allow sanctuary cities — though no Virginia jurisdiction counts itself as a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants — and therefore exacerbating a rising crime wave fueled by the MS-13 gang.

 

Both pitches are aimed squarely at firing up the two sides’ respective bases.

 

“We’re two one-party states,” said Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Northern Virginia. “This comes down to who shows up their base, which is why at the end of the campaign I’m having to choose between an MS-13 member and a Nazi.”

Meanwhile, the need to rally the base sparked the following mini tweet storm from President Trump earlier this morning attacking Ralph Northam as "weak on crime, weak on our GREAT VETS, Anti-Second Amendment...and has been horrible on Virginia economy."

....and has been horrible on Virginia economy. Vote @EdWGillespie today!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2017

.@EdWGillespie will totally turn around the high crime and poor economic performance of VA. MS-13 and crime will be gone. Vote today, ASAP!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2017

As the Washington Post points out, the key to a Northam victory will be high voter turnout in deep-blue, urban Northern Virginia cities while Gillespie will be relying on the more rural towns in the Southwest.

Northam and the Democrats are concentrating on a deep-blue urban crescent that runs from Northern Virginia to Richmond and Hampton Roads and has been key to Democratic wins for statewide offices since 2009.

 

Gillespie has been courting Republicans in white rural Southwest and Southside Virginia but also needs to peel away moderates and independents. He particularly needs votes in Northern Virginia, where he lives, to overcome Northam’s built-in advantage with Democrats in the most populous part of the state.

 

African American voters are an important bloc for Democrats and have been pivotal in their ability to win statewide elections. Northam comes from Hampton Roads, home to a large African American population, and is backed by scores of black elected officials statewide, relationships that he cultivated over 10 years as a state lawmaker and lieutenant governor.

Meanwhile, The Hill notes that just one Virginia county, Prince William County in North Virginia, has managed to pick the winning candidate in every race since 2004.

Observers in both parties are zeroing in on a handful of key precincts in bellwether counties and cities, crafting base appeals aimed only at turning out their core voters.

 

In the last nine closely-fought statewide elections — the presidential contests in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016; Senate contests in 2006 and 2014; and gubernatorial races in 2005, 2009 and 2013 — only two jurisdictions have picked the winning candidate every time: Prince William County, just south and west of the Washington Beltway, and tiny Radford City, on the I-81 corridor west of Roanoke.

 

Six other jurisdictions have picked the winner in eight of those nine close elections: Albemarle County and Harrisonburg City, both near Charlottesville; Henrico County, in the Richmond suburbs; Northern Virginia’s Loudoun County; Northampton County, on the eastern shore; and Sussex County, south of Richmond.

As a reminder, here is how Virginia"s results turned out in the 2016 Presidential race.  Hillary won the state by nearly 5.5 points with large victories in Richmond, Alexandria, Norfolk and Virginia Beach.

Of course, in the end, tonight"s race will all come down to just how effective the Russians have been at manipulating the ignorant masses across Virginia who couldn"t possibly form their own opinion without some nefarious Facebook advertisements to tell them how to vote.

The Passing Of The Pelosi Era

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

In the first round of the special election for the House seat in Georgia’s Sixth District, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff swept 48 percent. He more than doubled the vote of his closest GOP rival, Karen Handel.

A Peach State pickup for the Democrats and a huge humiliation for President Trump seemed at hand.

But in Tuesday’s final round, Ossoff, after the most costly House race in history, got 48 percent again, and lost. If Democratic donors are grabbing pitchforks, who can blame them?

And what was Karen Handel’s cutting issue?

Ossoff lived two miles outside the district and represented the values of the Democratic minority leader, whom he would vote to make the speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.

The Pelosi factor has been a drag on Democrats in all four of the special elections the party has lost since Trump’s November triumph.

Prediction: Democrats will not go into the 2018 Congressional elections with San Fran Nan as the party’s face and future. No way. As President Kennedy said, “Sometimes party loyalty asks too much.”

Post-Trump, it is hard to see Republicans returning to NAFTA-GATT free-trade globalism, open borders, mass immigration or Bushite crusades for democracy. A cold realism about America’s limited power and potential to change the world has settled in.

And just as Trump put Bush-Romney Republicanism into the dumpster in the 2016 primaries, Hillary Clinton’s defeat, followed by losses in four straight special elections, portend a passing of the guard in the Democratic Party.

So where is the party going?

Clearly, the energy and fire are on the Bernie Sanders-Elizabeth Warren left. Moreover, the crudity of party chair Tom Perez’s attacks on Trump and the GOP, being echoed now by Democratic members of Congress, suggest that the new stridency to rally the angry left is gaining converts.

Trump’s rough rhetoric, which brought out the alienated working class in the ten of thousands to his rallies, is being emulated by “progressives” — imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

Nor is this unusual. After narrow presidential defeats, major parties have often taken a hard turn back toward their base.

After Richard Nixon lost narrowly to JFK in 1960, the Republican right blamed his “me-too” campaign, rose up and nominated Barry Goldwater in 1964. A choice, not an echo.

After Hubert Humphrey lost narrowly to Nixon in 1968, the Democratic Party took a sharp turn to the left in 1972 and nominated George McGovern.

A 21st-century variant of McGovernism seems be in the cards for Democrats today. The salient positions of the party have less to do with bread-and-butter issues than identity politics, issues of race, gender, morality, culture, ethnicity and class.

Same-sex marriage, abortion rights, sanctuary cities, Black Lives Matter, racist cops, La Raza, bathroom rights, tearing down Confederate statues, renaming streets, buildings and bridges to remove any association with slave-owners or segregationists, putting sacred tribal lands ahead of pipelines, and erasing the name of the Washington Redskins.

The Democrats’ economic agenda?

Free tuition for college kids, forgiveness of student loan debt, sticking it to Wall Street and the 1 percent, and bailing out Puerto Rico.

And impeachment — though a yearlong FBI investigation has failed to find any Trump-Kremlin collusion to dethrone Debbie Wasserman Schultz or expose the debate-question shenanigans of Donna Brazile.

And where are the Democratic successes since Obamacare?

The cities where crime is surging, Baltimore and Chicago, have been run for decades by Democrats. The worst-run state in the nation, Illinois, has long been dominated by Democratic legislators.

The crisis of the old order is apparent as well across the pond.

Jeremy Corbyn, a Bernie Sanders radical socialist, led his party to major gains in the recent parliamentary elections, as Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May saw her majority wiped out and faces the same seditionist grumbling as Nancy Pelosi.

Western elites are celebrating the victory of Emmanuel Macron, the “youngest French President since Napoleon,” who defeated Marine Le Pen by a ratio of almost 2-to-1 and whose new party, En Marche! (In Motion!), captured the Assembly. But the celebrating seems premature.

For the first time in the history of De Gaulle’s Fifth Republic, neither the center-left Socialists nor center-right Republicans, the parties that have ruled France for 60 years, made it into the finals in a presidential election.

And while the first round of that election saw the ruling Socialist Party’s candidate run fifth, with 6 percent, the votes of the rightist Le Pen and far left-Communist Jean-Luc Melenchon together topped 40 percent. It is the flanks of European politics that seem still to be hard and growing, and the center that seems shaky and imperiled.

Moreover, Macron faces daunting problems. Unemployment is nearly 10 percent, with youth unemployment twice that. Terrorist attacks from within Muslim communities continue to rise, as do the number of boats of Third Worlders migrating from across the Med.

Can anyone believe that, as these trends continue, Europeans will continue to back centrist policies and moderate politicians to deal with them?

Dream on. That is not the history of Europe.

"Our Brand's Worse Than Trump" Democrats Demand "Toxic" Pelosi Step Aside, Trump Urges Her To Stay

Update: Nancy Pelosi does have one supporter who believes she should stay...

I certainly hope the Democrats do not force Nancy P out. That would be very bad for the Republican Party - and please let Cryin" Chuck stay!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2017

*  *  *

Democrats" embarrassing special-election loss in Georgia, after the liberal media built up unrealistic expectations, has provoked a wave of bitter blowback that targets House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

As Axios notes, it"s part of a generational argument that"s also driving the party"s 2020 conversation.

“It was a very rough night for Nancy Pelosi,” said Sean Clegg, a Democratic strategist in San Francisco, adding that he was personally a big fan of hers.

“Republican messaging attacking Pelosi appeared to be more effective than Democratic messaging against Trump. That’s a problem going forward, and it’s going to be a challenge in House races particularly.”

"I think the problem is we have not come up with an agenda and then we need a strategy to communicate it," Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., said.

"We can"t just be against something."

On Wednesday, some Democratic members of Congress publicly voiced concerns about Pelosi, raising the specter of a leadership challenge.

“I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top,” Rep. Filemon Vela, a Texas Democrat, told Politico.

“Nancy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost, but she certainly is one of the reasons.”

Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, reportedly met Wednesday morning with a group of lawmakers who have been conferring about economic messaging, according to several people present who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Luján told the group that his committee would examine the Georgia results for lessons, but he urged the lawmakers to portray the race in positive terms in their public comments, stressing that Democrats have consistently exceeded their historical performance in a series of special elections fought in solidly Republican territory.

It was in the meeting with Mr. Luján that Mr. Cárdenas, a member of the Democratic leadership, brought up Ms. Pelosi’s role in the Georgia race, calling it “the elephant in the room.”

Ms. Pelosi was not present.

On the front page of liberal heartland Silicon Valley"s paper, The Mercury News of San Jose...

"Some of the toughest ads against the 30-year-old [Georgia Dem candidate Jon] Ossoff were those tying him to Pelosi, whose approval ratings are underwater outside California."

Furthermore, as NYTimes reports, in a possible omen, the first Democratic candidate to announce his campaign after the Georgia defeat immediately vowed not to support Ms. Pelosi for leader.

Joe Cunningham, a South Carolina lawyer challenging Representative Mark Sanford, said Democrats needed “new leadership now.”

Even Democrats who are not openly antagonistic toward Ms. Pelosi acknowledged that a decade of Republican attacks had taken a toll: “It’s pretty difficult to undo the demonization of anyone,” said Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. of New Jersey.

So with all that said, we are left with one question, as The Economic Collapse blog"s Michael Snyder asks, are the "toxic" Democrats destine to become a permanent minority party?

It has become exceedingly clear that the Democratic Party is in deep trouble.  Close to 55 million dollars was spent on the race in Georgia’s sixth congressional district, and that shattered all kinds of records.  Democrat Jon Ossoff was able to raise and spend six times as much money as Karen Handel and yet he still lost.  This was supposed to be the race that would show the American people that the Democrats could take back control of Congress in 2018, and so for the Democrats this was a bitter failure.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee actually injected almost 5 million dollars into the race themselves, and Planned Parenthood threw in another $700,000.  But after all of the time, effort and energy that was expended, Handel still won fairly comfortably.

The Democrats are trying to spin this result as some sort of “moral victory”, but as Dan Balz of the Washington Post has pointed out, there are “no moral victories in politics”…

There are no moral victories in politics. Republicans won on Tuesday in the most important special election this year. Democrats lost, as they have done in the other special elections in GOP-held seats this year.

For the national Democratic Party, the debate continues about developing a message that goes beyond attacking Trump, or assuming dissatisfaction with the president will be enough.

It has been a very long time since there has been so much national attention on a single House race.  A number of high profile Hollywood celebrities became personally involved in Ossoff’s campaign, and they were absolutely devastated when he lost…

Celebrities who donated time and money to Ossoff’s campaign, including actresses Alyssa Milano and Rosie O’Donnell, used their social media accounts to react to the Democrat’s loss shortly after the election results were confirmed late Tuesday night.

Milano, who personally drove voters to the polls in April’s preliminary election and was actively campaigning for the Democrat for most of Election Day, tweeted simply: “Grouphug” and “Get in.”

Meanwhile, electronic music producer Moby and vocal Trump critic O’Donnell appeared to be frustrated by the results, with Moby questioning how Democratic “still can’t win” even with “buffoon” Donald Trump in the White House. O’Donnell tweeted: “DONALD TRUMP IS THE DARKNESS ITSELF.”

Where does the Democratic Party go from here?

Their anti-Trump message is not working, and their usual divide and conquer tactics are not working either.

At this point either the Democratic Party is going to have to reinvent itself, or they could be facing a long, painful string of election defeats for the foreseeable future.  To say that things have not been going well for the Democrats lately would be a major understatement.  I really like what Rush Limbaugh had to say about this on his radio show…

“You have no idea the degree to which the media and the Democratic Party are destroyed today. I’m talking about how they feel … which is complete and utter defeat, frustration and devastation,” he said on Wednesday, hours after Republican Karen Handel was a multiple percentage point winner over defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff.

“The dirty little secret is the media and the Democratic Party is turning off average Americans. They are not persuading, they are not convincing people Trump is a reprobate,” he continued. “They do not know how to beat Donald Trump. There are depressed and despondent.”

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why Jon Ossoff lost.

All of the anger and violence that we have seen lately has greatly tainted the Democratic Party.

The Democrats have become the party of Kathy Griffin.

The Democrats have become the party of Antifa and mock Trump assassinations.

And the Democrats have become the party of James Hodgkinson.

U.S. Representative Tim Ryan was right on the ball when he admitted that his party’s brand has now become “toxic” in much of the nation…

Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who tried to unseat Ms. Pelosi as House minority leader late last fall, said she remained a political millstone for Democrats. But Mr. Ryan said the Democratic brand had also become “toxic” in much of the country because voters saw Democrats as “not being able to connect with the issues they care about.”

 

“Our brand is worse than Trump,” he said.

As I have discussed repeatedly, the left doesn’t have any positive vision for the future to offer the American people.  They cannot win in the marketplace of ideas, and so they use anger, frustration, intimidation and violence as weapons.  For quite a while the Democrats successfully used “the blame game” and divide and conquer tactics to win elections, but now the American people are seeing through the charade.

The more angry and violent the left becomes, the more the American people are going to turn against them.  The following comes from Daniel Greenfield…

But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.

The left is as angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are beginning to match its anger.  The left still clings to the same anger it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare, whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized, whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were destroyed.

Of course it is quite true that the Republican Party needs to be cleaned up as well.  Many establishment Republicans use labels such as “conservative” and “Pro-Life” to win elections, but then they end up government like Democrats.  And so many members of Congress in both parties spend far more time and energy raising money for their next elections than they do serving the American people.

There is a reason why Congress only has a 17.6 percent approval rating at the moment.  Both major parties should take that as a sign that they need to clean up their acts, because the American people are sick and tired of the status quo.

* * *

Of course the denial runs deep in The Democratic Party as a morning-after memo from the head of the House Democrats" campaign arm, DCCC Chair Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, tries to buck up the troops by declaring: "THE HOUSE IS IN PLAY," partly because of "the nationwide collapse of support for President Trump."

And Pelosi herself made the following incredible statements this morning...

• *PELOSI SAYS PROUD OF GA. CONGRESSIONAL RACE SHOWING


• *PELOSI SAYS PROUD OF UNITY AMONG DEMOCRATS, AND HER LEADERSHIP


• *PELOSI SAYS MANY DISTRICTS ARE NOW OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEMOCRATS


• *PELOSI SAYS DEMOCRATS UNITED ON ISSUES

It appears all that Democrats are united on is that Pelosi should go.

Democrats, Stop With The Poll Rigging...It's Getting Embarrassing

Last fall, in the months/weeks leading up to the presidential election, we spent a fair amount time talking about how Democratic pollsters were setting themselves up for a massive embarrassment on election day with their obviously rigged polling data that consistently suggested Hillary had a commanding lead.  In fact, just weeks before the election, the Washington Post published a poll showing that Hillary was well on her way to a "blowout" 12-point victory (we wrote about it here:  This Is How WaPo"s Latest Poll Gave Hillary A 12 Point Advantage Over Trump).  Needless to say, that never happened and those pollsters suffered the humiliating consequences of their biased "math."

Unfortunately, as last night"s special election in Georgia makes all too clear, no one on the left seems to have learned any lessons from their presidential poll rigging debacle last November.

In fact, one prominent pollster even declared just 6 days before the election that if Ossoff failed to win it would mean that "MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN."

It means there"s a 70% chance Ossoff wins and a 30% chance that MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) June 14, 2017

Of course, the problem isn"t that "math is dead" or "data is broken"...the problem is that rather than using data to arrive at a solution pollsters have resorted to starting out with a solution and then solving for the data.

Which is exactly what appears to have happened in Georgia.  As the following chart points out, with just 9 days left until election day, pollsters were predicting a fairly easy win for Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff in Georgia"s 6th district runoff...shocking, we know.  But, just over a week later, the Republican candidate ended up easily walking away with the win, and served up another embarrassment for pollsters in the process as actual results swung 8.6 points from predictions peddled to the public just a week earlier.

So how does this keep happening?  Well, it"s not that surprising in light of the fact that Democrats literally wrote a playbook on how to rig polling data through "oversamples."  As we noted last October in a post entitled "New Podesta Email Exposes Playbook For Rigging Polls Through "Oversamples"", it all apparently has a lot to do with "oversampling" various minority groups.

The email even includes a handy, 37-page guide with the following poll-rigging recommendations.  In Arizona, over sampling of Hispanics and Native Americans is highly recommended:

Research, microtargeting & polling projects
-  Over-sample Hispanics
-  Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets)
-  Over-sample the Native American population

For Florida, the report recommends "consistently monitoring" samples to makes sure they"re "not too old" and "has enough African American and Hispanic voters."  Meanwhile, "independent" voters in Tampa and Orlando are apparently more dem friendly so the report suggests filling up independent quotas in those cities first.

-  Consistently monitor the sample to ensure it is not too old, and that it has enough African American and Hispanic voters to reflect the state.
-  On Independents: Tampa and Orlando are better persuasion targets than north or south Florida (check your polls before concluding this). If there are budget questions or oversamples, make sure that Tampa and Orlando are included first.

Of course, the intent of publishing these ridiculous polls is presumably to "chill" the Republican vote...afterall, why go through the hassle of long lines at a polling station if your candidate has no shot at winning? 

That said, the strategy only worked BEFORE the media and pollsters lost all credibility...so, why bother keeping up the charade?  As we mentioned above, it"s just getting embarrassing at this point.

Georgia Special Election - Handel Pulls Into An Early Lead With 46% Of Votes Counted

Update 7 (9:15 EST):

Hope on the Democrat side would seem to be fading somewhat as Handel has pulled away to a 3.2% lead with roughly 60% of the vote counted...which can only mean that the Russians have potentially prevailed again. 

Meanwhile, the odds of an Ossoff win are tanking...

Update 6 (8:45 EST):

With roughly 46% of the vote now counted, which mostly consists of early votes, Handel holds a narrow 0.4% lead.  Of course, this seems to be a promising sign for Republicans as Ossoff was expected to win the early voting by a wider margin. 

Meanwhile, Handel is currently leading the election day votes by a wide margin of 58% - 42%.

As much as it likely pains them to admit, even the New York Times now seems to be predicting a Handel win.

Update 5 (8:15 EST):

According to the Washington Post, Ossoff has taken a small lead as Dekalb County votes have started to flow in.  That said, Ossoff was expected to perform better in early voting so only time will tell if his narrow lead will hold up once in-person votes start to get counted.

Insiders tell me about 145,000 voted early, either in person or by mail. Ossoff barely leads (0.6%) what"s in so far, about 120,000 votes.

— Robert Costa (@costareports) June 21, 2017

Update 4 (7:50 EST):

The first numbers are just now coming in and they show a slight lead for Republican Karen Handel.

Update 3 (7:45 EST):

After getting their forecasts massively wrong in the Presidential election last November, the New York Times is back with their "Live Forecast" for tonight"s special election.  We would say take this with a couple grains of salt.

The GA-6 live model is live. https://t.co/jqVrGQslhy pic.twitter.com/HsqJOBP9zk

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) June 20, 2017

Update 2 (7:10 EST): 

To our complete "shock", polls in Cobb and Fulton county have closed on time at 7pm EST but polls in the heavily Democratic county of Dekalb have been allowed to stay open until 7:30pm EST because of "electronic voting issues" earlier in the day. 

Polls in Cobb, Fulton polls close at 7pm in 6th district, DeKalb polls open until 7:30 pm #GA06

— Election HQ (@ElectionNewsHQ) June 20, 2017

Maybe we"re having memory issues, but it seems like "electronic voting issues" only seem to result in polling extensions in heavily Democratic areas...probably just a coincidence.

Update 1 (6:45 EST):

With polls closing any minute, tonight"s special election for Georgia"s 6th district is being described as a "coin toss." 

That said, CNN and Democrats already seem to be hedging their bets by pointing out that the heavily Democrat-leaning Dekalb County has been hit by severe flood warnings throughout the day which they say has suppressed voter turnout.

Of course, we"re almost certain that the Russians must have figured out a way to make it rain just in the heavily Democratic areas of the 6th District...this is just too "convenient".

When nature throws a flood warning into your get out the vote efforts. Classic ATL summer storm #GA06 @BBCNorthAmerica pic.twitter.com/KOWyTGrjA4

— Suzanne Kianpour (@KianpourWorld) June 20, 2017

The key to following tonight"s results will be watching how the candidates fare in the three counties that make up the 6th District: DeKalb, Cobb and Fulton.

Ossoff is expected to do well in DeKalb, but he will likely need big turnout there to overcome Handel"s advantage in Republican-leaning Cobb and Fulton counties.  Per the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

North Fulton is home to some of the most conservative turf in the district. Republican Karen Handel hails from there, and it encompasses the highest share of early votes. The county has a reputation for being slow to tally its votes (it took Fulton until after 2 a.m. to fully report during the first round of votes in April), but Fulton’s top elections official said he expects things to move smoothly today since there’s only one race on the ballot.

North DeKalb accounts for the most Democratic-leaning part of the district. It’s where Democrat Jon Ossoff grew up, and it’s also where he’ll be looking to rack up votes. Voting at two precincts there has been extended by 30 minutes after officials reported slow check-ins this morning.

As we mentioned below, it’s particularly crucial to look at Cobb County, which is a traditional Republican stronghold. If Ossoff does well there it’ll be a good sign for his odds to win the congressional seat.

Remember: to win #GA06, Jon Ossoff (D) needs about 61% in DeKalb, 50% in Fulton & 43% in Cobb.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) June 20, 2017

* * *

Below is our preview of Georgia"s special election from earlier this morning:

Democrats have gone "all-in" on the 30-year-old documentary film-maker and former congressional aide, Jon Ossoff, to win Georgia"s 6th Congressional district.   Over the past several months, they have repeatedly portrayed the runoff as a referendum on the Trump administration and a preview of the 2018 mid-terms .  Now, as voters head to the polls today, the question is whether their gamble will payoff...certainly, given the amount of money they"ve spent, anything less than a victory will be yet another stinging defeat for Democrats.

The contest for Georgia"s 6th district pits Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican Karen Handel in a race that has drawn national attention and historic levels of spending.  As The Mercury News has pointed out, this race has been the costliest in the history of Congressional races with Ossoff raising over $23 million.  Ironically, he received nearly 9x more donations from California than from Georgia, a testament to how this special election has morphed into a national contest for Democrats.

Between March 29 and May 31, Ossoff reported receiving 7,218 donations from California, dwarfing the 808 donations he received from Georgia. In the nine Bay Area counties alone, he received 3,063 donations in the same time period.

Those are only a fraction of Ossoff’s total donations, as he doesn’t have to report contributions from people who give less than $200 in total. In addition, many of the individual donations include the same people giving to his campaign multiple times.

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Handel"s support has surged in recent days making the race a dead heat heading into election day. That said, just like last November, we would be shocked if there weren"t some "oversamples" in the polling data. 

For those not familiar with the district, Georgia"s 6th is located just north of Atlanta and has been controlled by Republicans since 1979.  In fact, it is the same seat that was held by former Speaker Newt Gingrich from 1979 - 1999.  And while the district had been a stronghold for Republican presidential candidates, Trump just narrowly bested Clinton in 2016.

Of course, with Republicans holding a substantial majority in the House, today"s election will have minimal practical ramifications in the near term.  Moreover, while the winning party will undoubtedly cast the results as a perfect predictor of how the 2018 mid-terms will play out, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight notes that anything short of a blowout will provide minimal insight into the next election cycle.

“If either Democrat Jon Ossoff or Republican Karen Handel wins narrowly, it will be portrayed as a more important predictive signal than it really is. If either Handel or Ossoff wins by more than about 5 percentage points — which is entirely possible given the historic (in)accuracy of special election polls — you can dispense with some of the subtlety in interpreting the results, especially if the South Carolina outcome tells a similar story. Otherwise, Tuesday’s results probably ought to be interpreted with a fair amount of caution — and they probably won’t be."

For those not familiar with Georgia"s 6th District, here are some helpful maps to explains who is expected to perform best and where.

Understanding the Georgia special election, in maps https://t.co/9XQH0RpIy1 pic.twitter.com/o48nTQCBHj

— POLITICO (@politico) June 19, 2017

With that intro, here are The Hill"s "things to watch" as voting gets underway:

1.  Will the huge turnout trend continue?

While special elections typically convince few voters to head to the polls, the outsized attention on the Georgia special election has led to booming turnout.

During April’s primary election, 194,000 voters cast their ballot, with 57,000 of those votes coming early.

More than 143,000 voters have already voted early for Tuesday’s matchup between Ossoff and Handel, a figure that means the runoff turnout will likely eclipse that of the April primary. Some observers say Tuesday’s figures could even surpass the number of people who voted in the district for the 2014 midterm election.

Strategists in the state expect Handel to do significantly better with the early vote compared to April’s primary, when she was competing against nearly a dozen Republicans.

Ossoff will also need to have strong early-vote numbers, especially since Republicans historically do better with Election Day turnout.

Will GOP strongholds and white women save Handel?

2.  Can Ossoff flip Republican moderates and turn out black voters?

 While Ossoff won easily in April’s first round of voting with 17 other candidates, more voters backed a Republican than a Democrat. So with turnout already looking high, experts believe Ossoff needs to increase his margin by about 6,000 or more votes to be in good shape.

Ossoff also has to turn out black voters, whose enthusiasm flagged in 2016 after being a reliable voting bloc during Obama’s two elections. The Democratic hopeful went to several events on Saturday with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights icon, to celebrate Juneteenth, which commemorates the abolition of slavery.

3.  Can Democrats keep outperforming Clinton?

 While Democrats have failed to flip any Republican seats in special elections this year, they have seen one promising trend — candidates keep outperforming Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margins.

4.  What does the vote mean for Trump’s agenda?

 The record-setting spending, the furious jockeying between national parties and the occasional cameos from Hollywood celebrities are all happening for one reason: Trump.

With few electoral opportunities between Trump’s election and the 2018 midterms, the suburban Atlanta congressional seat has become the closest thing to a referendum on Trump’s agenda.

Democrats want to frame their excitement and fundraising as a result of anti-Trump frustration, so a win for them will be seen as a victory over Trump.

If Ossoff wins, look for Democrats to seize on that message as a warning shot for 2018. An Ossoff victory could dampen the spirits of GOP donors, convince more politicians to break from their president and trigger retirements by Republican lawmakers fearing a tough reelection fight.

So how will it all turn out?  Will Democrats hand Trump his first big loss and a taste of what is to come in 2018 or, just like in November, did the Dems just spend an obscene amount of money for absolutely nothing?

Things To Watch As Voters Head To The Polls In Georgia's Special Election

Democrats have gone "all-in" on the 30-year-old documentary film-maker and former congressional aide, Jon Ossoff, to win Georgia"s 6th Congressional district.   Over the past several months, they have repeatedly portrayed the runoff as a referendum on the Trump administration and a preview of the 2018 mid-terms .  Now, as voters head to the polls today, the question is whether their gamble will payoff...certainly, given the amount of money they"ve spent, anything less than a victory will be yet another stinging defeat for Democrats.

The contest for Georgia"s 6th district pits Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican Karen Handel in a race that has drawn national attention and historic levels of spending.  As The Mercury News has pointed out, this race has been the costliest in the history of Congressional races with Ossoff raising over $23 million.  Ironically, he received nearly 9x more donations from California than from Georgia, a testament to how this special election has morphed into a national contest for Democrats.

Between March 29 and May 31, Ossoff reported receiving 7,218 donations from California, dwarfing the 808 donations he received from Georgia. In the nine Bay Area counties alone, he received 3,063 donations in the same time period.

Those are only a fraction of Ossoff’s total donations, as he doesn’t have to report contributions from people who give less than $200 in total. In addition, many of the individual donations include the same people giving to his campaign multiple times.

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Handel"s support has surged in recent days making the race a dead heat heading into election day. That said, just like last November, we would be shocked if there weren"t some "oversamples" in the polling data. 

For those not familiar with the district, Georgia"s 6th is located just north of Atlanta and has been controlled by Republicans since 1979.  In fact, it is the same seat that was held by former Speaker Newt Gingrich from 1979 - 1999.  And while the district had been a stronghold for Republican presidential candidates, Trump just narrowly bested Clinton in 2016.

Of course, with Republicans holding a substantial majority in the House, today"s election will have minimal practical ramifications in the near term.  Moreover, while the winning party will undoubtedly cast the results as a perfect predictor of how the 2018 mid-terms will play out, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight notes that anything short of a blowout will provide minimal insight into the next election cycle.

“If either Democrat Jon Ossoff or Republican Karen Handel wins narrowly, it will be portrayed as a more important predictive signal than it really is. If either Handel or Ossoff wins by more than about 5 percentage points — which is entirely possible given the historic (in)accuracy of special election polls — you can dispense with some of the subtlety in interpreting the results, especially if the South Carolina outcome tells a similar story. Otherwise, Tuesday’s results probably ought to be interpreted with a fair amount of caution — and they probably won’t be."

With that intro, here are The Hill"s "things to watch" as voting gets underway:

1.  Will the huge turnout trend continue?

While special elections typically convince few voters to head to the polls, the outsized attention on the Georgia special election has led to booming turnout.

During April’s primary election, 194,000 voters cast their ballot, with 57,000 of those votes coming early.

More than 143,000 voters have already voted early for Tuesday’s matchup between Ossoff and Handel, a figure that means the runoff turnout will likely eclipse that of the April primary. Some observers say Tuesday’s figures could even surpass the number of people who voted in the district for the 2014 midterm election.

Strategists in the state expect Handel to do significantly better with the early vote compared to April’s primary, when she was competing against nearly a dozen Republicans.

Ossoff will also need to have strong early-vote numbers, especially since Republicans historically do better with Election Day turnout.

Will GOP strongholds and white women save Handel?

2.  Can Ossoff flip Republican moderates and turn out black voters?

 While Ossoff won easily in April’s first round of voting with 17 other candidates, more voters backed a Republican than a Democrat. So with turnout already looking high, experts believe Ossoff needs to increase his margin by about 6,000 or more votes to be in good shape.

Ossoff also has to turn out black voters, whose enthusiasm flagged in 2016 after being a reliable voting bloc during Obama’s two elections. The Democratic hopeful went to several events on Saturday with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights icon, to celebrate Juneteenth, which commemorates the abolition of slavery.

3.  Can Democrats keep outperforming Clinton?

 While Democrats have failed to flip any Republican seats in special elections this year, they have seen one promising trend — candidates keep outperforming Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margins.

4.  What does the vote mean for Trump’s agenda?

 The record-setting spending, the furious jockeying between national parties and the occasional cameos from Hollywood celebrities are all happening for one reason: Trump.

With few electoral opportunities between Trump’s election and the 2018 midterms, the suburban Atlanta congressional seat has become the closest thing to a referendum on Trump’s agenda.

Democrats want to frame their excitement and fundraising as a result of anti-Trump frustration, so a win for them will be seen as a victory over Trump.

If Ossoff wins, look for Democrats to seize on that message as a warning shot for 2018. An Ossoff victory could dampen the spirits of GOP donors, convince more politicians to break from their president and trigger retirements by Republican lawmakers fearing a tough reelection fight.

So how will it all turn out?  Will Democrats hand Trump his first big loss and a taste of what is to come in 2018 or, just like in November, did the Dems just spend an obscene amount of money for absolutely nothing?

Will Georgia's 6th District Mark Ground Zero Of The "Resistance"?

Democrats have portrayed the runoff for Georgia"s 6th Congressional District, which will take place tomorrow, as a referendum on Trump"s first months in office.  The runoff pits Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican Karen Handel in a race that has drawn national attention and historic levels of spending with Ossoff raising an astounding $23 million. 

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Ossoff holds 2.6 point advantage in recent polls. That said, just like last November, we would be shocked if there weren"t some "oversamples" in that polling data which means tomorrow night could be a very long evening for Ossoff and Handel. 

And, just like the the national election, the outcome of tomorrow"s contest will ultimately come down to voter turnout.  As The Hill points out, Ossoff will need black voters to turn out in much greater numbers than they did for Hillary.  As for Handel, strategists say that female turnout will be the key to her ultimate performance.

As The Hill points out, with less than 24 hours until polls open, the Democratic machine is in overdrive today with their "Get Out The Vote" efforts.

“The GOTV effort is huge and critical,” Ossoff told a small group of reporters Sunday at his Chamblee field office.

“We’re doing everything we can to make sure folks know when and where to vote and how. And making the case for fresh leadership given what’s going on in Washington. And that sending another career politician to D.C. ain’t going to change anything."

“This is going to be an extraordinarily close election and it’s going to be a late night on Tuesday,” he said. “Every vote will count.”

Meanwhile, with Dems anxious to hand Trump his first "loss", Ossoff has drawn a lot of support from national groups as well.

National groups such as the Progressive Turnout Project, a political action committee, and Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) have also been flexing their muscles when it comes to boosting turnout and reaching scores of voters in the sixth district.

PPAF said it has 40 canvassers who knock on doors each day, and will have knocked on 80,000 doors ahead of the voting. The group touts that it’s twice the size of any other independent canvasses backing Ossoff.

Alex Morgan, executive director of Progressive Turnout Project, said the group has four full-time field reps based in the district and is focused solely on encouraging Democratic voters who vote in every election to turnout again on Tuesday. The group has knocked on 20,000 doors since mid-April, getting 1,500 commitments from people who say they"ll vote for Ossoff.

While canvassing, the group said they’ve consistently heard that voters want a representative who will be a check on Trump, who has been the “biggest partisan force” in the special election.

For those who plan to track voter turnout in real time tomorrow evening, Politico provided some helpful maps of which regions are most critical for each candidate.

Understanding the Georgia special election, in maps https://t.co/9XQH0RpIy1 pic.twitter.com/o48nTQCBHj

— POLITICO (@politico) June 19, 2017

Of course, Ossoff took some heat throughout the campaign for not being a resident of the Congressional district for which he"s looking to get elected...an issue which Handel hammered him on during a recent debate.

Meanwhile, the recent shooting of Majority Whip Steve Scalise could have a major impact on voter turnout with Brad Carver, the GOP chairman in Georgia’s 11th Congressional District, saying it could be what ultimately tips the scales in favor of Handel.  Per the Washington Post:

“I’ll tell you what: I think the shooting is going to win this election for us,” Carver told the Post Saturday. “Because moderates and independents in this district are tired of left-wing extremism. I get that there’s extremists on both sides, but we are not seeing them.”

“We’re seeing absolute resistance to everything this president does,” Carver continued. “Moderates and independents out there want to give him a chance. Democrats have never given this president a chance.”

And with the race being hailed as a key referendum vote on the Trump administration, it"s hardly surprising that Trump has pushed for Handel over twitter.

The Dems want to stop tax cuts, good healthcare and Border Security.Their ObamaCare is dead with 100% increases in P"s. Vote now for Karen H

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2017

So how will it all turn out?  Will Democrats hand Trump his first big loss and a taste of what is to come in 2018 or, just like in November, did the Dems just spend an obscene amount of money for absolutely nothing?