ESPECIALLY when it's the midterms and a GOP is in control of the presidency.

It doesn't make sense with historical Southern trends.

All trends favour a tossup.

It makes sense because of demographic change.

Southerners tend to prefer candidates who are socially conservative.

And energised Democratic turnout across the country, routinely achieving the highest turnout in history.

Or fiscally conservative, or both

Virginia is considered "Southern" also.

What happened to it?

It changed demographically.

and also Southerners prefer white Democrats

+ Georgia isn't like Alabama or Louisiana.

Virginia has tons of suburbs of Washington DC filled with federal agents.

It's more urbanised.

I'm thinking of North Carolina and Florida too.

Even Florida doesn't elect anything worse than a moderate Democrat

FL also is a tossup or do you think it's a shoe-in for DeSantis too?

Because it's NOT.

I marked it as a tilt.

These are highly competitive races now.

That's what "tilt" means

you can't even justify a tilt

no data supports it

just your hunch

Primary polling suggests that DeSantis will do well in many Hispanic areas where Republicans have historically won majorities among nonwhites/Hispanics as recently as the latest Presidential election.

And GOP primary turnout in 2012 was much higher than the Democrats and yet they lost.

Primary turnout isn't a very effective predictor in Florida.

+ Hispanics tend to have very low levels of turnout in primaries.

Blacks remember

+ blacks are at very high turnout levels rn and most FL Democrats are mobilised. I don't think the primary turnout has ever been this close between Democrats and Republicans.

Georgia is only 53% White

Georgia also has a growing Hispanic population also.

>primary turnout in 2012

The point was to suggest that primary turnout is not an effective predictor.

Did Democrats even know they were holding primaries in 2012?

Bill Nelson also won in 2012 despite much lower primary turnout than his opponent.

Nelson won big too.

This is a fucking midterm, and needless to say, I wasn't speaking only of turnout but of Hispanics voting for DeSantis.

So we have the following factors working against us:
1. Extremely high Democratic turnout
2. Black Democratic nominee to energise blacks even more
3. Midterms with a Republican in office
4. A moderate state with the GOP candidate not viewed as moderate (the same deal with the Democrat opponent)
5. An electorate increasingly swarmed by minority voters
6. 4/5 polls suggesting Gillum will win

A la tossup.

Either way, this is unquestionably a nail-biting election.