Congratulations to
@Jack V Savage !
Here is the reason I took the bet:
California uses a top-two primary system. In the primary for this contest, Knight---as an incumbent(!)---received significantly more votes than
all the Democrats combined. In my mind, that is very powerful evidence pointing to a Knight win.
In fact, I still can't wrap my head around the provisional result. It would be one thing if Knight had some major scandal since the primary or if Hill had run some great campaign, but neither are true. The best they came up with on scandals was that Knight denied taking NRA money when in fact his campaign received a couple of small donations. Knight was an LAPD officer for 18 years. As for Hill, she is very young and significantly to the "left" of the district.
In 2016, Knight beat a much stronger candidate there (Caforio) by 4.2% the same year that Hillary Clinton won the district by 7%!
A big part of Hill's strategy was to turn out the youth vote, but my research indicated that the college student population in this district is quite small.
I also communicated with people in the district who were not impressed with Hill and did not expect her to win.
I'll keep looking for explanations of this strange outcome. In lieu of that, it might be enough to turn me into a conspiracy theorist.
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As a side note,
@SBJJ is a heavy favorite to hand Jack his first loss in two months. I wonder who Jack would rather have lost to between the two of us.
Again, congratulations to Jack.