North Carolina
Races of Interest: U.S. Senate, U.S. 13 District, 11th District
It’s been nearly three decades since Richard Burr became a U.S. senator. Republican Sen. Richard Burr's retirement is turning North Carolina into one of the most closely watched Senate races by the democrats this year in an effort to flip it.
Since 1992, Republicans have won the last four North Carolina Senate elections and the past three presidential elections in the state. A former N.C Gov. Pat McCrory, a former Rep. Mark Walker along with the current Rep. of district 13 on his third term, Ted Budd, relatively unknown candidate, got into the race to replace him as the next Republican senator from North Carolina.
In 2016, when an opportunity presented itself after redistricting opened up North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District in 2016, Ted decided to run and bring a businessman’s outlook to our nation’s capital. Ted Budd started off working at a young age on his family’s cattle and chicken farm and for their janitorial and landscaping business. Ted attempted to bring an outsider’s perspective to Washington, having never held elective office prior to his successful run for office.
Ted sits on the Financial Services Committee, where he uses his real world experience to roll back the restrictive regulations that strangle job creation in our country a view shared by President Trump. Rep. Budd has a conservative voting record during his six years in the House which aligns to his strong belief in God, family and country.
So how well did the Republicans do in comparison to the Democrats in bringing out the voter in Pennsylvania 2022 Primary?
The enthusiasm was greater for the Republican party which had 780K voters cast a ballot for them over the Democrats 588K where the Republican's out voted the Democrats by close to 11 points in the Senate Race.
Comparing the above 2022 Senate party participation Primary map, to the 2020 Presidential map, more counties have turned BLUE highlighting fact that less Republicans came to vote in the primary than the Democrats in those areas turning them BLUE despite the anomaly is that the Republicans cast more votes than the Democrats. These blocks of counties in the south are relatively small voting populations majority of them under 5K except Cumberland which is under 30K. The Republican party needs to figure out why they lost deeply RED counties they did not out perform the Democrats, while having an ex-Governor and a Trump endorsee in the race. It should now be a worry for Ted Budd to figure out the cause. In the 2020 general elections, Trump received 2.75M to beat Biden with 2.68M voters by 1.4 points margin.
2020 Presidential primary again a more BLUE to the 2020 general election, but also less BLUE than the 2022 senate primary. The only good news for Ted Budd is that he has 30K more voters participate than the 2020 primary where President Trump was running as an incumbent with almost no need for people of his party to come out in droves to vote. But for the Democrats, the participation dropped from over 1+ million votes to 600K which generally is anticipated. A 400K+ drop from that 2020 primary to 2022 Senate Primary.
How did President Trumps endorsement help Ted Budd in comparison to the other republican candidates in the Pennsylvania Primary?
Ted Budd a relative unknown candidate until Trump endorsed him beat ex-governor Pat McCrory in almost in all the counties except Mecklenburg. His victory were in the 70+% in which counties Trump won with huge margins in 2020 and above 50% of his less popular counties. Clearly Trump's endorsements paid off here as he beat an ex-governor who raised more cash than Budd did.
The polls had Ted Budd at 41%, but he beat his Republican contenders with 60%, a delta of 19%. With an error margin of 19%, campaign's in these polling, candidates relying on them are bound to make expensive errors. Along with the candidates who used this to raise money on a lame horse from unsuspecting donors, plenty of news media used these faulty polls to call the race close, creating hype where there was none to exists. These polls again, totally ignore the data from the previous elections and assume that voters get reset to zero memory every election. Very disingenuous on their part.
When a candidate beats his opposition in all but one county of the state, there was no race to begin with. Trump's early endorsement and the county to county campaigning did help Ted Budd in easily defeating McCrory. Both McCrory and Budd platforms are similar the only difference is the endorsement. The only other extra thing that Budd did was to call for investigating the 2020 election. The people who voted for him in all those counties, must have also been aware his If not for Trump's endorsement he would have been in the same boat as Mark Walker who got just 70K votes.
How did Ted Budd (Trump's endorsee) do in comparison with the Democrat front runner Cheri Beasley?
On the Democrat side, Cheri Beasley, easily beat everyone with 85% of the votes getting 502K votes. Unlike in Pennsylvania, where the John Fetterman, had Josh shapiro's Governors race vote to compare, in North Carolina, no such comparison can be made with Cheri Beasley. Cheri Beasley got more votes than Ted Budd's 448K. Not a great place to start, but he did have to compete with an Ex-Governor and another congress man who he did beat quite handily.
Though Ted Budd's behind Cheri Beasley, the Republican party did outperform the Democrat party by 11 points. The difference is the Republican vote to the Democrat vote is almost 200K. That is a huge drop in enthusiasm, especially if the 2020 presidential general elections of over 5+ million votes cast with a difference of only 1.4 points margin. Not having the same voters show up as the Republicans for the Democrats could be concerning. In a free and fair elections, the primary elections is in many cases the truest and only form of polling one needs to figure out how the general elections play out. There is no reason to doubt it is not in this case.
For Ted Budd to win, he has to make the map look a lot like President Trump's 2020 or 2016 map. He has to work hard to turn out the votes in all counties as the Democrats do have populous strong holds in North Carolina.
How did President Trump's other North Carolina endorsees for the congress races(Bo Hines and Rep Madison Cawthorn) do?
Bo Hines running for North Carolina District 13, won his race with Trump endorsing in mid march 2022 beating Kelly Daughtry and Devan Barbour.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn lost his primary to Chuck Edwards by a slim margin.
Idaho
Races of Interest: Governor, Secretary of State
How poorly did Trump's candidates do in Idaho?
Trump candidates in Idaho did just as badly as they did in Georgia.
Governor
President Trump had endorsed the Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin to primary an incumbent Governor Brad Little. Brad Little was able to beat Janice with 15 point margin.
Secretary of State
Another defeat for Trump's endorsed Secretary of State in Idaho as it happened in Georgia.
Oregon
Trump did not endorse anyone in Oregon Governor or house races. Democrats lead the Republicans in participation by 13.4 points in the 2022 primary. This is a huge improvement over the 2020 presidential primary, where the Democrats beat the Republicans by around 30 points. Tina Kotek beat Tobias Read, both of who beat the highest GOP candidate.
Some of the Oregon house races to the west of the state in 2020 were won by the Democrats by 5 points. With a highly unpopular out going Governor and country lead by the Democrats heading the wrong direction, could be a possibility of flipping Oregon 5 and Oregon 4 seats to Republican.
In 2020, Oregon 4 was won by the Democrat Peter A Defazio (240K) over Republican Alek Skarlatos (216K) by just 24K votes with a lead of 5 percentage points. Not a huge lead for the Democrats to defend in the current environment. Oregon 5 Democrat Kurt Schrader (234K) beat Amy Ryan Courser (204K), which is a 6 percentage point with a margin of 30K votes.
With the right campaigning messaging and effort, both these or if not atleast one of these districts could flip RED.
