Midterm projections. (3 Viewers)

[SamAndreas]

I've voted and election day is something like 5 or so days away. That means it's time for projections as to how it goes this time.

Usually I have a good sense, and good track record for being right using the simple time proven system of "who's turn it is". That's the method where one ignores everything about the current issues, and who is running. One only uses who's the incumbent along with the last election's outcome to predict the next election.

Under that simple system this upcoming midterm election is a case of it historically being the Republican's turn.

But this time it doesn't quite fit that normal mode. Trump threw it all out of whack. Republicans seem to be entirely capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory this time. So instead of thinking that the Republicans are going to win this one, I don't know.

That's my projection. I Don't Know. I'm a bit hopeful this time instead of being adjusted to the idea that the Republicans are going to win this one for sure.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Bad candidates cost the Republican Party plenty in the 2022 election. But with the possible exception of Michigan, in no state did they cost their party like they did in Arizona.

And now we can apply some hard data to just how bad those candidates, including Kari Lake and Blake Masters, were.

It has been clear since election night that Arizona was a major missed opportunity for the GOP. Most of its statewide GOP candidates ran the kind of election-denying, Trump-aligned general-election campaigns that other candidates mostly shied after their primaries. The result: While the GOP had strong turnout, did relatively well down-ballot and won the state treasurer’s race by double digits, it lost campaigns for Senate, governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

As the New York Times’s Nate Cohn noted recently, the electorate in the state tilted Republican by about nine points, with 75 percent of registered Republicans voting, compared to just 69 percent of registered Democrats — and in what had been up until recently a red state.

That would seem to be a recipe for success, but it wasn’t. So it was easy to surmise what had happened in Arizona was like what happened elsewhere, as Cohn wrote: Republican-leaning voters simply didn’t vote for certain Republican candidates.

There’s now compelling evidence this happened on a large scale in Arizona in precisely the races we thought.

The Arizona Republic this weekend highlighted a study of voting in all-important Maricopa County, which accounts for about 60 percent of the state’s electorate. It’s from a group called the “Audit Guys,” which includes a data analyst for the state Republican Party. The study showed the Lake, Masters and other statewide candidates like secretary of state hopeful Mark Finchem lost a significant number of votes from voters who otherwise backed mostly Republicans.

Those voters didn’t just skip those contests, mind you; they voted in large numbers for Democrats. And in some cases, including Lake’s, that appears to have been decisive.

In her case, there were nearly 40,000 voters who didn’t vote for her but otherwise mostly voted Republican across 14 other contests. And about 33,000 of them voted for now-Gov. Katie Hobbs (D). (Some didn’t vote or cast ballots for write-in candidates.).........

How bad a candidate was Kari Lake? This bad.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Two elected officials in a rural Arizona county who stalled certifying election results have been charged by Arizona’s attorney general with conspiracy and interfering with an election officer.

Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, Republican county supervisors in Cochise county, face two felony counts for their initial refusal to certify the county’s election results in 2022. A grand jury convened earlier this month to discuss the potential charges, which were filed on Wednesday.

Crosby and Judd had to be ordered by a court to certify the November 2022 election results, passing the statewide deadline for counties to canvass results. Even after the court order, Crosby did not show up to vote on the canvass.

The indictment alleges Crosby and Judd conspired to delay Cochise county’s vote canvass and knowingly interfered with the secretary of state’s ability to complete a statewide vote canvass on time.

The two supervisors have repeatedly pushed false election claims and sought a hand count of all ballots, later deemed illegal.

Earlier this year Democratic attorney general of Arizona, Kris Mayes, vowed to prosecute over election interference issues in the swing state, which has seen all manner of election denialism since the 2020 election.…….

Arizona voting officials charged for refusing to certify 2022 election results

Republican county supervisors Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd initially refused to certify their county’s election results

www.theguardian.com