So, what happened in New York's 19th congressional district?

So, an argument I'm hearing from Hillbots is that because Zephyr Teachout lost in the 19th congressional district of New York, the country has no desire for left wing politics, because Sanders supported her and she lost in a "battleground" congressional district.

For more reading on this district, I'm going to drop a few links here for you to read at your leisure, the rest of the article will be largely based on information from these links.

So, anyway, the thesis the democrats are trying to push is because this candidate lost, that there is no appetite for left wing politics and that Sanders would never win nationally.

This, seems absurd to me. Yes, the district supposedly has a cook partisan index of D+1, which puts it in swing state territory, but I have suspicions for why this is wrong. Look at the map for this district. It's in upstate New York, not too far from the city, but far enough where the district is mostly rural. It has no major metropolitan areas in it, and seems to curve around the urban areas of Albany and Poughkeepsie. It might have suburban areas, but regardless, few actual urban areas. Democrats are mostly concentrated in urban areas. Just looking at geography alone seems to indicate that a democrat is gonna have a hard time in this district. I could be wrong as I don't know the area, but it doesn't look very urban and progressive. It actually looks more rural than many gerrymandered districts here in PA that consistently vote red despite heavily democratic urban areas being located within them.

But wait, it gets worse. While the Hillbots will point out victories made in the district with Obama in 2008 and 2012 and how it used to go blue in the late 2000s when the democrats had a huge wave of support, this ignores a few key factors. First of all, 2006 and 2008 in congressional races and 2008 and 2012 in presidential races were very good years for democrats, and these are the years that the democrats won there. So this district seemed to vote the way the rest of the country did on the whole. And, as we know, 2016 was a VERY bad year for republicans. But this ignores yet ANOTHER key factor: redistricting. Apparently, looking at the links above, redistricting happened in 2013 in New York. Before 2013 when all of these democratic victories took place, the 19th district was directly south of where the current district is, and where 18th congressional district is, which actually went democrat this election. The current 19th district was actually carved up into several other districts with wildly differing demographics that exist now. As such, the previous elections don't matter and the first race with the current district boundaries was in 2014. A very bad year for democrats. And let me show you exactly what happened in 2014:

Chris Gibson (R): 62.6%
Sean Eldridge (D): 34.5%

OUCH. So the first year under its current district boundaries, the republicans won by almost 30 points. That's a landslide. This is supposed to be a battleground district? My own district is R+6 if I recall and we only get about 8-10% in favor of our republican incumbents. I mean, I know that 2014 was a very bad year for democrats, but a 28 point difference means that the democrats never had a freaking chance at all here. Not by a long shot. This would be 7 standard deviations by my election models with a 4 point margin of error, and a result that would give us a democrat is so unlikely it's virtually zero. I don't know how you can get a cook partisan district of D+1 out of this. Even if the GOP had a very good year, I can't see how this is a battleground district at all. It's rural/suburban, and it seems to lean very heavily republican by a margin you would expect out of a safe R district. Keep in mind for the presidential and senate races I didn't even look at states with above an 8 point spread in the polls.

So, 2016:

John Faso (R): 54.7%
Zephyr Teachout (D): 45.3%

This is better than what happened in 2014. The results narrowed from 28 points to 9, but if you have that great of a republican lean to begin with, I don't know how this could be considered competitive with this alone.

Polls do paint a different picture though. The ballotpedia link had two polls taken, with one having Teachout 5 points ahead, and the other having Faso 5 points ahead. So maybe the above analysis is wrong and it was competitive, since the mean was a tie. Still, as we know the polls have been spectacularly wrong this election and the country went a lot more red than expected, with the polls being off by 5-10 points not being uncommon. This means either that the district never had a shot of going blue and the polls were off, or that this district was supposed to go either way and it went to the republicans by 9 points. In other words, it seemed to follow national trends as a whole. This means that Teachout either ran in a district that is deceptively more red than some analysts indicate, or that she got swept up in the "red wave" in which contempt for Clinton and the democrats on a national level led to down ballot democrats getting destroyed as well, since I think there's evidence of national trends impacting elections like this.

As such, from what I can see, it seems to me that Teachout's loss has little to do with the nation's appetite for progressive candidates, and more to do with the demographics of the district, and trends going on in the country on a national level. She ran in the wrong district, and she ran in a year when democrats were extremely unpopular on a national level. It's highly likely that, like elsewhere, democrats stayed home or voted for republicans here, and she got swept up in this mess. I don't think that this is a referendum on Teachout on a national level though, and the idea that it is seems like more establishment mental acrobatics. Run a more positive message on a national level and I would expect more down ticket dems to do a better job. Or, heck, run in a district that doesn't seem to have a track record of leaning red.

The same goes with Feinstein, who I heard these same people talking about. We already discussed that. Out of 9 competitive senate races, the party that won the presidency won the senate. And Feinstein in Wisconsin probably got swept up in the lack of voter turnout that contributed to a republican win there. You see, when people are pissed at the democrats on the presidential level and stay home, they often don't show up for congressional races either. And that's what happened there.