As the election results came in for Georgia’s 6th District on Tuesday evening, and it was looking more and more like Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff would lose to Republican Karen Handel, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow had her excuses list at the ready.
First, Maddow blamed the weather:
Steve, let me ask you one last question on this. If there was a turnout effect from the bad weather today in the district, does that have any partisan implications that you could foresee in terms of what was expected for same day, election day voting rather than the early vote?
Maddow’s numbers wizard, Steve Kornacki, essentially replied with a nothing-burger answer:
Yeah. Well, and potentially. It all depends where — this is anecdotal and we’ll see when the results come in. There have been anecdotal reports and I’ve even heard Republicans saying this. That the turnout in Dekalb — this is the Democratic part of the — this is where, if you’re Ossoff you want to be getting 60, 61, 62 percent of the vote. You’re expecting that. He got 60 percent in DeKalb.
In the early vote, there have been some anecdotal reports that the turnout here in DeKalb, less than expected. That could be a same-day effect — you can attribute that to anything. We’ll see if that turns out, but that’s something else and obviously, if you get into an election like this where it’s going to be decided by a point or two, you could blame anything, whichever side you turn up on.
To be fair, there is precedent for bad weather effecting Democratic voter turnout. A 2007 study published in The Journal of Politics looked at presidential election turnout from 1948 to 2000 and concluded that “decreased voter turnout benefitted Republican candidates for the White House, with every inch of rain above normal garnering the Republican candidate an extra 2.5 percent of the vote,” according to US News.
Politico reports that Tuesday’s rainfall was exceptional:
At DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, which sits in the state’s 5th District but is close to a heavily Democratic part of the 6th District, 4.8 inches of rain fell between noon and 6 p.m. Eastern Time. Over the past 30 years, the average rainfall for the entire month of June in the Atlanta area is 3.95 inches.
There’s no telling if the weather actually made an impact on voter turnout, and whether the weather benefited Karen Handel, per the model from 2007.
Later, Maddow spun another story, claiming money was the cause of the Ossoff loss:
Again, this is the special election in [6th] congressional district in Georgia. Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican Ken Handel. If nothing else, we’re getting a real-time result of what it means when more money is spent to try to win a congressional seat than at any other time and for any other seat in American history.
Maddow made this remark without caveat. Considering her demographic, it’s likely that Maddow’s audience would take such a statement to mean Handel outspent Ossoff.
Here’s the truth — the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Jon Ossoff campaign itself raised a combined $28.6 million, while the Congressional Leadership Fund, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the Handel campaign itself raised a combined $16.7 million. Smaller groups contributed additional money with $2.6 million going to Ossoff, and $6 million going to Handel.
In total, Ossoff had $8.5 million more than Handel, yet Handel won the election by 3.8% in the final tally.
It must have been the rain! It must have been the money! No matter what, progressives will spin Ossoff’s loss to absolve the candidate, and the progressive ideals he espoused, of any fault.