This is why the Georgia 6th district election was no surprise

[still_one]

There were 5 Democrats running in that race, including Ossoff.
There were 11 republicans running in that race, including Handle
and 2 independents.

Here were the results for the top 5 before the runoff:

Jon Ossoff (Democratic) 48.12%
Karen Handel (Republican) 19.77%
Bob Gray (Republican) 10.8%
Dan Moody (Republican) 8.84%
Judson Hill (Republican) 8.76%

All the others in that race had less than 1%,

Because of that, Ossoff had a real chance to win the election outright, but not the runoff. That was always a fact, inspite of the media and blogger bullshit. If Ossoff didn't win the election outright, the odds were very much against that he would win the runoff, because all those other republicans would line up behind Handle, and those <1% ers, would add up to about 2% points in Handle's column, along with the undecided, since a point that seems to be conveniently forgotten, that district has been as red as they come for decades.

That Ossoff lost by 5% in the runoff is amazing considering that Tom Price won that district by double digits

[TomSlick]

1. Concur

Tonight was interesting to watch but this ain't the important election.

On to 2018. Imagine the damage Trump/McConnell/Ryan will have done to the GOP by then.

[still_one]

3. It is interesting because we lost by 5%, and some of that might be attributed to the

damage trump has already done, in a district that went double digit for Price his HHS

[obnoxiousdrunk]

2. Tom Price

won it by 24 points.

[still_one]

4. Makes the 5% even more amazing. Thanks

[moonscape]

13. But without any real opposition, no?

[delisen]

5. Good analysis

[JoeOtterbein]

6. We need to repeat, over and over: "ALL elections must be with paper ballots and MUST be audited"

keep saying it, over and over. Please!

[GoCubsGo]

7. Yep.

And, we also can't discount the fact that there was likely some rat-fuckery going on as well. He still got pretty damn close, in spite of that, too.

[dalton99a]

8. Kick.

[octoberlib]

9. Excellent post. I can remember this being discussed at the time and

all the pundits saying it would be a lot harder for Ossoff to win the run off because all the R votes would go to Handel. And that's what happened.

[still_one]

10. You are exactly right october, there was some very good analysis at that time

[Iplayoneontv]

11. How much $$$ did the Republicans pour into this race?

Because I keep seeing whiny 'Dems poured $30 million into this race' reports. Those were mostly individual donations.

GA shot themselves in the foot. They could have had a great guy instead they have someone talking about repealing the estate tax.

[AlexSFCA]

12. considering the amount of money spend on this race

this was epic fail and huge blow to democratic party. I am not very optimistic about 2018, we have better chances on getting the senate back. Turnout is very much in question for midterms (likely low). People who don't vote are the true enemies of democracy, even bigger enemies than trump.

[still_one]

14. No it wasn't an "epic fail" for the Democratic party. The OP explained it very clearly what

happened. Ossoff had a real chance to win the election outright, but not the runoff. The reason he had the chance to win the election is because all the 11 republicans in that race took votes away from each other. When the runoff occurred, those republicans united to vote for Handle. The 6th district has be an extremely red district for decades.

This isn't rocket science.

Your assessment that we have a better chance on getting the Senate back is flawed. We actually have a better chance of capturing the House because there are more seats that the republicans are defending in that body than in the Senate, and a lot of those seats up for grabs in the house are in blue states.

There were 5 Democrats running in that race, including Ossoff.
There were 11 republicans running in that race, including Handle
and 2 independents.

Here were the results in Georgia's 6th for the top 5 before the runoff:

Jon Ossoff (Democratic) 48.12%
Karen Handel (Republican) 19.77%
Bob Gray (Republican) 10.8%
Dan Moody (Republican) 8.84%
Judson Hill (Republican) 8.76%

All the others in that race had less than 1%,

Because of that, Ossoff had a real chance to win the election outright, but not the runoff. That was always a fact, inspite of the media and blogger bullshit. If Ossoff didn't win the election outright, the odds were very much against that he would win the runoff, because all those other republicans would line up behind Handle, and those <1% ers, would add up to about 2% points in Handle's column, along with the undecided, since a point that seems to be conveniently forgotten, that district has been as red as they come for decades.

That Ossoff lost by 5% in the runoff is amazing considering that Tom Price won that district by double digits

[diva77]

15. all arguments based on "results" produced by DREs must be taken with grain of salt

The voting system has to be transparent before you can apply logic to any of the "results"