Special Election megathread (6/25: CO-4)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So here's something that understandably went unnoticed: Mike Carey won OH-15 by just under 17 points, while Trump had won it by 14.

This result was definitely not consistent with what we saw in NJ or VA. Why was the swing in this district so much smaller?

It's kind of a polarized district and the Republicans are pretty maxed out in most of their strong areas in it

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Lol, EPIC ratio.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It blows my mind that people are extrapolating from a race with such pathetically low turnout. Dems are going to have a bad midterm, but this election has a small fraction of the votes of even the 2017 special elections where Dems fought in Republican seats. We see the 2020 realignment with extra apathy and a small swing away from Biden. There’s a good reason all the Republicans on Twitter keep calling back to Clinton and Obama, not Biden, for a comparison.

Collin and Denton for Cameron is a good trade.

"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in McAllen, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Dallas and you can repeat that in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada."

You do realize that Mexicans do not only live in Brownsville but also in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and, basically, throughout Texas? Right now, it might appear that the "trade" is worthwhile but we are a rapidly growing demographic and Democrats have a lot to lose from writing us off - there's nothing preventing Mexican-Americans from giving Trump 60 or even 65 percent of the vote in Texas in 2024.

Not writing anyone off other than a marginal voter in the RGV who likes Trump. Is there evidence urban Hispanics are voting like RGV and other rural Hispanics? I don’t see people saying that any of those urban Hispanic districts are at risk like TX-34. And I can match Collin and Denton County with diverse suburbs all over the country if we want to extrapolate, too.

In a word: yes. The swing to Trump in Houston in Mexican-American neighborhoods, while not as large as in the RGV, was very large. In my mind, Democrats have much further to fall in Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. You shouldn't view us as being "safe", you shouldn't write us off and treat us like your possession. There's no special issue that Democrats can use to appeal to Hispanics these days and, frankly, the way Democrats talk about race today actively alienates Hispanics!

Goodnight and good luck! P.S. you should be scared of diverse suburbs because those are suburbs that are lower middle class and poorer - this is ultimately a class issue.

Nobody is doing that? This is quite literally a made up concept that people use against Democrats when no one is treating Latinos/Hispanics as such?

Also, to the latter point in what you said, so the "way" Democrats talk about race is alienating but the way that the GOP has talked about race and in particular Latinos over the last 5-10 years isn't alienating? Come on now.

The liberal media hasn't covered this election, Democratic politicians aren't panicking over this election, Democrats didn't panic over massive losses sustained in 2020, they didn't prioritize immigration reform in 2021. Bluntly, in general, Democratic politicians and white liberals don't care about Hispanics. They don't care much about Asians either but there has been far more of a focus on "Asian hate" than any issue affecting Hispanics in this country.

Republicans were extremely alienating in 2016 and 2018 but they've dropped this rhetoric. Perversely, Democrats and, in particular, left-wing activists now sound much more offensive than Republicans. In the wake of Black Lives Matter, many actively scolded Latinos for being racist.

You're right about the activists. Not sure if that relates to normal Democrats and politicians though.

Whatever the case I think Democrats don't care much because this seat is going to flip back anyway with redistricting and the low turnout (they lost an RGV State Senate seat in 2018 also with rock bottom turnout) and I don't trust the GOP to not return to 2016-type rhetoric...but I've been saying Democrats need to fix their messaging to Latinos and the easiest start is by dropping a certain word. I think that is happening but slowly, it should pick up.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Mayra Flores was sworn in today and I had tears running to my face watching this.

https://twitter.com/GOPLeader/status/1539384342299803648

Tweet is incorrect. Blake Farenthold (yes that creepy sex pest guy who resigned and had to pay a settlement.) won in 2010 and represented an RGV-based district until redistricting.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Updated 1m ago
33% REPORTED
Candidate Party Votes Pct.
Patty Pansing Brooks
Democrat 22,372 +57.0%57.0%
Mike Flood
Republican 16,894 +43.0%43.0
Total reported
39,266

WOW!!!

Is this upset level results ?

I'm going to guess these are almost all from Lancaster County.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Updated 1m ago
33% REPORTED
Candidate Party Votes Pct.
Patty Pansing Brooks
Democrat 22,372 +57.0%57.0%
Mike Flood
Republican 16,894 +43.0%43.0
Total reported
39,266

WOW!!!

Is this upset level results ?

I'm going to guess these are almost all from Lancaster County.

OK I reviewed it and actually not, Lancaster County is a bit ahead of the district at 46% in when the whole district is 36% but a chunk of Sarpy County (Omaha suburbs) is also in the district and Brooks is winning that with only 24% in. Of course there's no guarantee the remaining portion is Democratic...Sarpy is actually a Republican county, but the district wraps around the Iowa border to take in the eastern part which is most Democratic, probably as part of a soft gerrymander to give NE-02 a more Republican chunk of it.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Updated 1m ago
33% REPORTED
Candidate Party Votes Pct.
Patty Pansing Brooks
Democrat 22,372 +57.0%57.0%
Mike Flood
Republican 16,894 +43.0%43.0
Total reported
39,266

WOW!!!

Is this upset level results ?

I'm going to guess these are almost all from Lancaster County.

A lot of lancaster but there is some rural stuff mixed in. Also Brooks is carrying Sarpy so far!

The big question is which part of Sarpy is in. If it's almost all of the Democratic areas then it'll definitely swing R from here on and that's not really that impressive. But we really don't know.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Are a lot of these reports early votes or Election Day? Does anybody know what NE reports first?

Actually that's a good question. Like check out this from the Nebraska SoS site: https://electionresults.nebraska.gov/resultsSW.aspx?text=Race&type=CG&map=DIST

319/414 precincts partially reporting but 0/414 fully reporting. That implies these are just one type of vote, be it mail, early or election day...but we don't know which.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's mostly early vote, scrap what I said.

So in other words, she will lose this lead as the night goes on.

Probably, but she does look likely to overrun Biden. So...we might have our first test case as to if the Roe overturn is boosting Democratic turnout.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Per the NY Times estimates of remaining votes though, Brooks would have to lose what's left in Lancaster County about 57-43 to match Biden's percentage.

The only other counties in enough to extrapolate from are Sarpy (won't do because of the county split) and Dodge, and in Dodge Flood is underrunning Trump by 3.7 points, so with 50% in he'd need to win the rest about 68.5-31.5 to match Trump. Not impossible I guess.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Lancaster County is 82% in and the district is 71% in, so not going to hold. Still...going to an impressive swing.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Flood takes the lead with 80% in.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

https://twitter.com/JosephSzymanski/status/1541965187200188416

Uh, what? Brooks is at 62.3, Biden got 52.3.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

If Brooks wins what's left in Lancaster by the 60/40 margin she has now, that's just enough to erase Flood's lead. Of course the rest of the district heavily favors Flood, so he still wins...but it's an embarrassingly close margin.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Lancaster has another drop at 10:15 central. Don’t see Flood losing but I want to see where this leaves the race.

I think we got it. NY Times has this race at 93% reporting and Flood leads 52.3-47.7.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Hilariously my employer probably helped the Democrats here. They're based out of Lincoln and have deals with local landlords to offer subsidized apartments to employees. I'm sure their hires are mostly Democrats.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Final result seems to be about Flood +6.34.

If you extrapolate that swing from the 2020 Presidential numbers you basically get 2018 results in the House. Now I'm not saying that you can extrapolate such a swing across the board obviously, but as noted above we might have proof that Biden's approvals aren't the main issue and the midterm isn't a referendum on him.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I have to say, both Flood and Brooks are like the epitome of "Generic R" and "Generic D" on basically everything. Obviously I didn't witness the campaign first hand but everything about them makes it seem like they were grown in a lab.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Democrats who dismissed TX-34 as meaningless creaming themselves over losing by less than expected, how utterly pathetic

The reason this race was surprisingly close was because the election was inexplicably held under the new lines, which caused the portion of Sarpy added to the new district to have really low turnout. This was a complete outlier, and Democrats thinking there will be a blue wave are going to look like idiots come November.

Lancaster County has always been fully in the district and swung four points.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Let me start with the obvious disclaimer that I'm fully aware these sort of numbers rarely have much impact on the general election even in an actual swing area, and this almost certainly doesn't mean anything in relation to the results.

With that said, I have noticed the early voting numbers for this are kind of weird. You can see the statewide ones here: https://www.sos.state.mn.us/election-administration-campaigns/data-maps/absentee-data

So far "turnout" is pretty low which isn't a surprise, Minnesota doesn't really have an early/absentee voting tradition and most of these applications are probably just preparing for the general election considering there's not many interesting races here, the only seriously contested statewide primary is R-Attorney General, there's some notable non-partisan races like Hennepin County Attorney/Sheriff but of course no one votes on those outside of Hennepin County. But Blue Earth County is a definite outlier. It has 1,859 votes returned so far, and beats every non-metro county except St. Louis and Stearns, both that have more than twice the population. It even beats Anoka County, which has more than 5x the population! And it's not just a case of this district being more motivated, since it even beats Olmsted County which is also in the district and has more than double the population.

So here's one possible explanation that popped into my head: more college students are voting absentee because they're not in Mankato over the summer but will be back in November so it makes more sense to just vote by mail than change their residence back to their parents' and then again back to Mankato. But if that's the reason, why is there such anemic turnout in Winona? It has less than 1/5 the votes, but 70% of the population.

So another explanation: The Mankato College Democrats and Blue Earth County DFL are really pushing GOTV and nowhere else is...which would fit in very well with my experience in the Blue Earth County DFL LOL. Us pushing our weight there while Winona sits on their hands is kind of par for the course (with the exception of 2016 where college students just stayed home everywhere in the state.)

That said this isn't a very important election, even if it was a swing seat it's only for who holds it for a couple months so it wouldn't surprise me if the Blue Earth County DFL is trying to do a show of force of sorts but realizes the race isn't going to be competitive (although an improvement over 2020 numbers is possible and could be a propaganda victory ala NE-01.) Ultimately though it's not important even in regards to the special election, 1,859 is still significantly less than the 7,929 votes Blue Earth County cast in the 2020 primary, which lacked any sexy races at all.

Another point though: A lot of rural Minnesota is vote by mail only and was well before Covid, and though this is more of a northern Minnesota thing (you can probably see the results in places like Cass and Itasca), it's still a thing in a lot of southern Minnesota townships too, so this could show lagging rural turnout...but we'll see. Cottonwood County for example has laughably low turnout, but it also looks like even the rural townships there just vote in the same location as the closest town.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I should note that MN-1 isn’t the sort of district where you’d expect a Dem resurgence to rear its head.  I’d be cautious about reading too much into a poor showing here.

Parts of it though are definitely worth looking at. Turnout in Rochester for example.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Just looking at turnout differences in the primaries for MN-01 RIP Ettinger lmao

He's obviously probably not going to win, but there's zero in from Olmsted, Blue Earth or Winona counties so this isn't a representative sample at all to put it mildly.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Just looking at turnout differences in the primaries for MN-01 RIP Ettinger lmao

He's obviously probably not going to win, but there's zero in from Olmsted, Blue Earth or Winona counties so this isn't a representative sample at all to put it mildly.

Its literally Nicollet LMAO

Everything reporting from there is rural, nothing in from North Mankato or St. Peter.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Just looking at turnout differences in the primaries for MN-01 RIP Ettinger lmao

He's obviously probably not going to win, but there's zero in from Olmsted, Blue Earth or Winona counties so this isn't a representative sample at all to put it mildly.

Its literally Nicollet LMAO

Look at Nicollet now LMAO.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It would be nice to get some more data so I can go to sleep

at just 10:21PM your time?