Nate Cohn

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@MappingFL i think if they think that way, they're wrong about that though. even if you prefer to think in vote margins, it does still have to be conditional on a certain level of statewide turnout in a given election -- not the turnout from a prior election — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@MappingFL but even besides the campaign v. analyst way of thinking, i actually do disagree with what you've said -- you win at *50%* +1, not any raw vote tally. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@MappingFL i definitely think there's a huge campaign v. analysis gap on this stuff. i've seen it before. and i get why that's how you have to think: ground game tries to turnout each voter one at a time, for example. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@32789ff @MappingFL because the dropoff in turnout on this scale -- 10% statewide -- is usually large enough to exceed the shift in vote share by county, so democrats will almost always lose ground in 'their' counties and gop will basically always gain (or reverse if you gain 10%) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@MappingFL that's not the way i look at it, but even stipulating that framing of his goal: i don't think this map represents the fulfillment of that goal from a warnock campaign standpoint, unless you think he won by holding down walker margins in rural areas (which just lower GOP turnout) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@MappingFL this just strikes me as the textbook example of why vote margins aren't very useful. it will basically always look like this going from a low to high turnout election; it will look like the reverse going from a low to a high turnout election — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

@pollhannes yes — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Walker may lead in the tabulated count, but our vote remaining map tells the tale: https://t.co/9ozPufmjn6 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

We've seen a stable, well-behaved needle long enough to turn it back on. We think Rapheal Warnock is on track to win https://t.co/I7hfdhlZLH https://t.co/izHbNg0dNC — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

I do think we have it fixed. We're certainly going to take more time before republishing to be as sure as we can be. Nonetheless, the version we have internally shows Warnock leading by 3 points with a very high likelihood to win — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Well folks, as many of you have gleaned, we've taken the needle down while we investigate some irregularities with our data. It wasn't necessarily biasing our estimates, but it was creating strange volatility... and it has been slow to fix and then hard to test and fix offline — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

At this stage, the big question-mark is the Atlanta-area Election Day vote. Almost none of it has been counted. Walker will need it to be great -- especially given how he did in the Election Day vote (against our own priors, to be fair) elsewhere in the state — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Overall, he's running ahead of our estimates for the election day vote by 5 points (he slightly underperformed in the early vote). We got early vote first, and now the election day vote is starting to get meaty enough to take seriously (300 precincts) — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The model's becoming a little more confident in Warnock, as he's continued to outperform our projections in the Election Day vote by a pretty modest margin — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

One risk for Warnock here: we have far fewer Election Day votes than early/absentee votes. So I'm more confident about Walker's slight overperformance than the other way around. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

So far, Warnock is underperforming our early/absentee projections by a hair, but Walker is underperforming the Election Day vote. — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The needle is live. Warnock leads by 1 point -- the results are almost exactly in line with our pre-election estimates, which supposed a re-run of the general election. https://t.co/3wv47idkv5 https://t.co/IpK5t4HNXf — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The needle is live. Warnock leads by 1 point -- the results are almost exactly in line with our pre-election estimates, which supposed a re-run of the general election. https://t.co/MNUKRLEInY — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Sneak preview (we're close) -- so far everything is *extremely* close to what we expected for a D+1 outcome https://t.co/dF2VFi9vfW — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

We've got data; running internally and cleaning out a couple of weird data oddities from having both county and precinct data from AP/state https://t.co/mI71OKsCCk — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

As I mentioned this morning, Warnock was likely to get around 59% of the advanced vote if no one changed since the general election. So far, he's tracking right in line with our expectations — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Headline: Maricopa joins basically everywhere -- Clark County, NC, FL, NY, GA, for starters -- in showing the GOP with a turnout advantage that ranged from above-average to huge. Subhead: very much in line with the R+8 electorate in the Times/Siena poll https://t.co/sRXpzbWvQw — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

lol thank you https://t.co/n5Nt76586u — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Alright, who is going to explain the 'great news for masters' shtick — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

I should note it's not 100% guaranteed that we get data. In November, we actually didn't get the granular, precinct by method data we've used in the past -- and that we'd need for a single-state race. I feel good about our chances tonight! But it's not all in our hands — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

The results page is live; The needle awaits data https://t.co/I7hfdhlZLH — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

We've got solid turnout data from three counties this afternoon -- DeKalb, Forstyh and Bartow -- and all three show turnout tracking toward about 85% of general election levels, or around 3.35 million votes — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Good work https://t.co/Ci8CRMOYq3 — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Repeat after me https://t.co/6XBhx2ss9p — PolitiTweet.org

Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn

Warnock also appears to have built a commanding lead in the advanced vote. He could be ahead by nearly 20 percentage points. Hard to reach much into that for a lot of reasons, but it's about as good for Democrats as they could have hoped at the outset — PolitiTweet.org