Is Tomorrow’s Georgia Special Election a Precursor of the 2017 Primary and General Election in one of Brooklyn’s City Council Districts

Nate Silver indicates that the Georgia result tomorrow is likely to be inconclusive  ---  BUT  ---  Silver’s Georgia tea leaves might be predictive of how things might go in Southwest Brooklyn come September & November

 

According to Nate Silver’s most recent look at tomorrow’s special election in Georgia,   “If the polls are right, then Democrat Jon Ossoff will receive by far the most votes in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, which is holding a special election to replace former U.S. Rep. Tom Price on Tuesday.  But Ossoff will probably finish with less than 50 percent of the vote, which would trigger a runoff between him and the next-highest finisher — most likely the Republican Karen Handel, but possibly one of three other Republicans (Bob Gray, Dan Moody Judson Hill) who are closely bunched behind her in polls….   Furthermore, the combined vote for all Republican candidates will probably exceed the combined vote for Ossoff and other Democrats, although it should be close. And the district has historically been Republican-leaning, although it was much less so in the 2016 election than it had been previously. All of this makes for a fairly confusing set of circumstances and a hard-to-forecast outcome….”  (See  “Handicapping The Georgia 6 Special Election”  by Nate Silver,  4/17/17,  FiveThirtyEight   [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/handicapping-the-georgia-6-special-election/]).

WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH WHO GETS TO BE THE “TOP BANANA” OUT OF A BUNCH THAT IN MID-APRIL INCLUDES:  BRANNAN,  ABBATE,  EL YATEEM, TONG, CARROLL, CAPANO, MC CABE  &  QUAGLIONE ? ? ?

Maybe, tomorrow’s vote in Georgia will be more conclusive about what will happen in Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst and Bath Beach,  Brooklyn, in November than who actually will be the replacement in congress for HHS Secretary Tom Price after tomorrow…..    When you get into the guts of the Nate Silver analysis,  you’ll see that the Georgia 6^th Congressional District is one of those Red-turning-to-Purple districts that very likely will stay in the Republican herd after all is said and done…..   Also you’ll see that getting into the guts of anything with Nate Silver will very quickly will get you out into the weeds of polling,  statistics and regression, both mathematical and psychological…..

Nonetheless,   this much is very plain and easy to see:   the Georgia 6^th is much more  “REPUBLICAN” than the 43^rd NYC Council District in Brooklyn…..  So, if the by far leading Democrat,  Jon Ossoff,  wins by obtaining 50+ percent of the vote tomorrow,  it will be very likely that 2017 is going to be a very bad year for Republicans everywhere,  and that includes in the Brooklyn-NYCC 43rd.   If Ossoff gets significantly below his lowest polling-projection of 41% (still a number well ahead of the rest of the pack),   the  picture for Democrats going forward is bleak,   both in the Georgia 6h and elsewhere.   More generally,  anything that Nate Silver says is a good indicator for Ossoff;   just take the opposite as a good indicator for the top Republican vote-getter in the Georgia 6^th Cong. Dist.   Even more generally,  the same is true about Republicans running in 2017 outside of the Georgia 6th,  but to a somewhat lesser extent of accuracy and over-all predictability.

Silver sees Ossoff getting somewhere BETWEEN the low-polling number of 41%  and a winning number of 50+%.....  That means the prediction o a run-off in the Georgia 6^th.  And that’s where Silver takes a real deep dive into the weeds.    Nonetheless,  a very important number and easy to see number is the aggregate Republican vote compared to the aggregate Dem vote.   If the Republicans hover around 50%  (and, heaven forbid, fall below it even a tiny bit),  that’s good for Ossoff and the Democrats  ---  if the aggregate Democrat vote is below 45%,  then that’s bleak for Ossoff and the Dems.

Here’s something that Silver said near the end of his column  ---  perhaps as important as all of that number crunching,  the overall Democrat-Republican bias in the district might skew any result on the final [run-off] election day.  As a result, even a very strong performance for Ossoff and the Democrats might not indicate a lot about the following  run-off, even if it very closely falls short of the 50+% needed to win on the first election day.

A similar fate might await any final GOP candidate running against any final Democratic Party candidate for the City Council in the 43^rd Counc. Dist.   First,  it is not likely that any Democrat running in  the 43rd Council District primary is likely to be as prohibitive a favorite as Jon Ossoff appears to be in Georgia's 6th Congressional District,  nor will they sweep the Democrat City Council  field on Primary Day by any ratio close to 40+%  to 1%, 2%  or  3%.....   On the other hand, even if one of the GOP’s Three Caballeros beats the other two like a pair of balky mules,  there just might not be enough Republican and Conservative leaning folks to pull out in November so as to win in the general election,  even if the ultimate Democrat candidate is an absolute "Black Swan" phenom with a name like Nancy Tong or Khader El-Yateem.