A warning about the bluer presidential-year electorate: that's largely a function of turnout, which normally drops substantially during midterm elections. However, the decline in turnout
this time was minimal--we saw turnout comparable to a presidential year. In other words, the "presidential-year electorate" may already be priced into the 2018 results, not so much additive to them.
Particularly if that's the case, then given that she won 47.6% of the vote this time around despite a weak campaign against a pretty good candidate, McSally is reasonably well-positioned to win in 2020 if she gets a better campaign strategy or a worse opponent or both.
Absentia wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "the hope is to give her the advantage of incumbency," unless you think Ducey has a personal preference for McSally over any other candidate. From a party perspective it makes no difference; he has to replace Kyl with somebody and McSally will be no more of an incumbent than anyone else he could appoint.
The party does care about holding the seat, however, and installing the most effective 2020 candidate they can find in that seat in hopes of granting them an incumbency advantage is arguably the best way to serve that goal. Evidently, they see McSally as that candidate.
"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn