When you invest enough to actually buy some small countries and still can't close the deal, it ain't a wave.
True!
In 2016, 112,000 Democrats voted in that congressional district. In 2018, 98,000 Democrats voted in that congressional district.
Good for the Democrats; they were obviously enthusiastic about their candidate.
In 2016, 251,000 Republicans voted in that congressional district. In 2018, 100,000 Republicans did.
I dunno why less than half the district's Republicans voted, and it's obviously something Republicans need to look into and address, but still with nearly all the Democrats having voted, and less than half the Republicans having voted, and the Republicans winning, doesn't seem propitious for the fortunes of the other party.
Somewhere I saw an article that 60 + % of Republicans polled on the weekend (Aug, 4-5) did not even know that there was a special election on Tuesday!
Living in the area, but not in the district, I can tell you that the saturation of media ads was immense: millions had to have been spent for thousands of ads in the past months on television and radio and in the one newspaper still alive (which supported the Dem O'Connor). Perhaps a majority of Republicans no longer watch television, or have gone off the grid in some mass way, but that does not seem likely. Perhaps they record their shows and fast forward through all ads. Perhaps they do not read the local press.
Balderson was not the most personable or charismatic candidate: twenty years older than his opponent, he looks like a "career politician" and sounds like one. The Dem is barely 30 years old, and with a very earnest face spouts all the usual agitprop about Republicans throwing Grandma and Grandpa into the streets and burning down the orphanages.
Dems had volunteers going door-to-door - which Republicans just cannot do for some reason - and these volunteers had both voter registration and absentee ballot forms to pressure people into voting for the Democrat right then and there. They target poor areas and the elderly: this is how they win elections...
Supposedly it "ain't over yet:" thousands of "provisional ballots" will be counted in ten days, and so the Dem has not conceded. HE may still win, either by the end of the month or in November, if Republicans still sit on their hands.
In either case, he made it clear that the race was not over, that the campaign was still on through the November election.
