US Politics, March 2018: Why do people leave the White House for good?

big ups to HOOS for gabbneb-Nerdstrom podcast proposal, xo

i'm watching the polls because i'm procrastinating. only about 20% of the results are in so far, but comparing the county-by-county results to the fivethirtyeight.com county-level benchmarks, lamb is already in a strong position.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/13/17116874/conor-lamb-rick-saccone-pennsylvania-18-special-election-live-results

vox seems more up to date. 36% of precincts in, lamb with a 8 point lead so far

Jitter on or off?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/13/us/elections/results-pennsylvania-house-special-election.html
(I only trust upshot/nyt/cohn after nov 2016.)

it's going to be very close.

whatever the final results, the main takeaway should be that this district swung substantially away from trump since nov 2016 - probably to the tune of around 20 points

and that's your toyota camry main takeaway. toyota camry. "let's go places"

62% in and Lamb is 6 points up. Not that close.

read section 4: political geography: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-pennsylvania-18th-special-election/

true but I wanna see Trump lose, lose, and lose some more, my main take away is fuck him

it's going to be slowly swinging back toward saccone the rest of the night. 80% of the votes are in from allegheny, the most democratic-leaning county in the district. only 53% are in from westmoreland, a county that leans heavily republican.

Well folks, we have some bad news. Westmoreland County has told us that they aren't going to report results by precinct tonight (though they had previously told us they would). The model runs on precinct results so, this is a problem.

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 14, 2018

*NYT dial swings wildly around in circles*

^^^ "we"/"us" = NYT/Upshot

Alright folks, we've shut the needle down. As mentioned earlier, Westmoreland County isn't going to produce precinct results, as we believed they would. It's the GOP base of the district. We can't responsibly make a forecast without data from there.

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) March 14, 2018

so does that mean westmoreland is just gonna be like....here's the whole county *barfs all the results at once*

county website data (62% reporting)

Lamb is up 16 in Allegheny (needs to be +14 to break even, per 538 benchmarks)
Lamb is down 18 in Greene (needs to be -19 to break even)
Lamb is tied in Washington (needs to be -6 to break even)
Lamb is down 12 in Westmoreland ((needs to be -19 to break even)

he's beating the benchmarks in all four counties, very good sign.

anyway while we wait can we all just agree that this is a great night for the NY Post

Take a bow, @NYPost pic.twitter.com/dthl70r1Sc

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) March 13, 2018

jfc, hitting refresh on this page and fuuuuuuck

87% reporting, 1.4% lead for lamb

Is Lamb going to squeak out a miraculous victory?

just a little napkin math based on what's left to report, I think Lamb wins this by like 500 votes

Lamb's lead actually going up slightly

91% reporting, 0.8% for lamb

94%, +.4% now

this night should end with a sword fight to the death

not feeling good abt this

whats left uncounted?

Alleghany and Westmoreland are gonna cancel each other out, Saccone has a *slight* lead in the other unreported votes but I don't think it'll be enough

They're going to get the exact same number of votes and it will be determined by coin flip, right?

95% reporting, 0.5% lamb

this has me all the way fucked up

they're about 1070 votes apart now, with another 1267 votes for drew miller, libertarian

Now .6%. Looks very bad for Saccone

he went down because a bunch of Westmoreland just came in

think there's enough of Alleghany left for Lamb to win it in a squeaker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr3Z4jHO6Go

if I understand right the remaining votes to be counted favor Lamb. I *think* he's got this

Oh my serious gawd are we really going to do this again? I respect & admire Karl but seriously are. we. ?

it's going to be slowly swinging back toward saccone the rest of the night. 80% of the votes are in from allegheny, the most democratic-leaning county in the district. only 53% are in from westmoreland, a county that leans heavily republican.

Just. No. Don't. Take a nap. Go get drunk. Come back in three hours. This up by X with Y percent, which precincts are yet to be counted, gah, no, just don't.

it's either this or a crossword

i will get drunk though

Almost always a good plan tbh

approx net votes remaining for Lamb, I think:

Washington: -300
Westmoreland: -300
Allegheny: +950

Meantime:

SCOOP: The family of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich just filed a lawsuit against Fox News, reporter Malia Zimmerman, and Ed Butowsky https://t.co/YYlS6tAKEj

— Michael Del Moro (@MikeDelMoro) March 14, 2018

Sorry, Allegheny +450 xp

This is based on my advanced “assume all the counties are uniform, assume votes are distributed equally among precincts, divide a number by another number” model so uh yknow just ignore it

that method's accurate more often than not

i predict Saccone gets typhoid

my method is to just trust god's plan, it all happens for a reason, and then i 'skim' through various numeric predictions in my head and the lord makes one of the feel 'hot' i know the lord's plan. and that plan is for lamb to squeak through on a razor thin margin

I normally disembowel a chicken while facing east,then check the arrangement of the entrails.

The chicken needs to be a virgin, but I don't know why (nor can I tell).

Allegheny count to be done by midnight