State Legislature Special Election Megathread v3

[Progressive Pessimist]

A data point of starting to emerge:

The gop is overperforming their 2020 margins by 3.5 pts right now

It’ suggests the house is a total toss up.

It sounds more like safe R to me.

[Progressive Pessimist]

That Michigan result is just the sort of good news I needed to hear after a harrowing day. My sense of inherent cynicism can't help but take over though and make me fear that it was just another Akin-Mourdock-Moore-esque fluke, or because it was a special election, or something. I really don't want to read too much into and have hope for November and beyond. 

Then again, maybe the key to Democrats mitigating the incoming Republican wave is to get them to talk about rape as often as possible. Somehow they are still f***ing up with this and people still actually care?!

Anyway, I said I was going to go back on hiatus a few posts ago, but I think this relatively positive post is the best one to do it on-leave on a high note and all that.

I'll probably be back for the next national travesty! See you then!..._{it shouldn't be long}...

[Progressive Pessimist]

I'm very pleased that we're still winning on the backs of Republicans unnecessarily wading into the abortion issue. Suck it, Dumbkin! Hopefully Democrats can take back the House of Delegates and keep the Senate this November and inconvenience his phony ass even more. 

[Progressive Pessimist]

The results tonight suggest that if the economy improves this year and next, and Biden doesn't have any major scandals or foreign policy disasters, the Republicans don't have much of a path to reclaiming the trifecta.

The most likely outcome in such a scenario is a reelected Biden, Speaker Jeffries, and McConnell controlling the Senate calendar once again (unless Sherrod Brown pulls off a miracle).

And there goes the scandal point.

Trump has literally the same scandal though so this feels different.  Either no big deal or it makes it more likely we get totally different nominees from both sides.

I'm pretty pessimistic on how Documentgate will unfold, but I will say that if the scandal doesn't end up bad enough to allow Biden the circumstance of facing Trump in a rematch, it's neutralized by Trump's version of it still being objectively worse in stark contrast.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Democrats now outperforming 2020 by 7.7% and 2016 by 12.4% when all special elections are averaged. I really think the pollsters are missing a LOT of Dem-leaning voters

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ajyphWQru9TgDDiBe8kvEmApBEXND2wl9MVaxi1dndk/edit#gid=0

Special elections shouldn't be extrapolated too much for upcoming regular elections, BUT they have been a pretty consistent indicator of the national environment. The 2022 midterms demonstrated this to great effect.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Democrats now outperforming 2020 by 7.7% and 2016 by 12.4% when all special elections are averaged. I really think the pollsters are missing a LOT of Dem-leaning voters

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ajyphWQru9TgDDiBe8kvEmApBEXND2wl9MVaxi1dndk/edit#gid=0

Special elections shouldn't be extrapolated too much for upcoming regular elections, BUT they have been a pretty consistent indicator of the national environment. The 2022 midterms demonstrated this to great effect.

House Democrats underperformed Biden by 7.3% in the 2022 midterms.

And yet Republicans only net nine seats in a year that was less Republican than it should have been. That's the point I'm making from the previous post. The special elections from the summer largely weren't Democratic wins but suggested that in the year's environment, something was happening not reflective of a GOP wave.

I would also say that special elections suggested the same thing in 2020, particularly the CA-27 special, to what ended up as Republicans' benefit

[Progressive Pessimist]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1701768490057691387

I'm not going to read anything into a special with less than 5K total votes but at least the doomers will be quite for another week.

I'll take it.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Seems like Berger will basically match Biden with final mail-ins, so I'd call this a win. Incredibly low turnout, but Dems will obviously like to see that this was nowhere near Hochul or even Schumer levels.

That's all I really wanted to see out of this special election. I don't know what it truly says about New York swinging and trending right or not, but the 2022 results probably won't be the norm going forward, even if there is still a rightward swing.

[Progressive Pessimist]

It’s really odd how the polls are showing a tied environment, but special elections, which are very indicative of the national environment, show a Democratic landslide.

https://twitter.com/ettingermentum/status/1703128458447008204?s=20

They were pretty indicative of the fact that last year was not going to be the expected red wave, so I don't see why that would be much different this year or next year. Even with turnout differences that still was the case ladt year. MN-1 and NE-1 obviously weren't very close in November like they were in the summer, but they were clear indications that Democrats were more motivated than expected.

[Progressive Pessimist]

The Democratic overperformance in White areas looks like +10 on whatever Biden got, similar to 2022.

Very bad news for Republicans in the swing states.

What's worse for them is that they are not doing better in Minority areas anymore, we no longer see any of those big GOP gains we got accustomed in 2022.

Yes, they were also collapsing with people of color, I would say that we are heading for a 2008 situation. However, with the white vote stabilizing, we could be in for a 2012 like situation. Which would probably mean that the big seven are still close, but more like Michigan than Wisconsin. Brandon might even pick up North Carolina and get Kerry margins in Ohio.

That's a bit too much wishful thinking to me.

[Progressive Pessimist]

The Democratic overperformance in White areas looks like +10 on whatever Biden got, similar to 2022.

Very bad news for Republicans in the swing states.

What's worse for them is that they are not doing better in Minority areas anymore, we no longer see any of those big GOP gains we got accustomed in 2022.

Yes, they were also collapsing with people of color, I would say that we are heading for a 2008 situation. However, with the white vote stabilizing, we could be in for a 2012 like situation. Which would probably mean that the big seven are still close, but more like Michigan than Wisconsin. Brandon might even pick up North Carolina and get Kerry margins in Ohio.

That's a bit too much wishful thinking to me.

The fundamentals always change, but if they don’t get worse, this is reasonable.

I would love for that to be true. And if so, that's remarkable news for Sherrod Brown.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Changing my predictions:

Minnesota: Likely D > Tossup.

Florida: Safe R > Tossup.

_{(not really)}

[Progressive Pessimist]

Why have recent special elections shown Republicans outperforming massively with college educated whites (ie NH, MA, MN, and even MS-Gov) while underperforming with Cubans?

I don't think we have enough evidence to make this claim. If you look at other state elections this November such as Virginia and Kentucky, Democrats did well.

Perhaps there's a slight anti-incumbent mood right now, but again not enough evidence to support that either.

Democrats did not do well in Virginia relative to Biden 2020, and Kentucky saw the largest left trends in the Appalachia coalfields.

In Virginia the Republicans threw all they had into those races though. Investment, I feel, is becoming an underrated aspect of campaigns these days.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Dusty Deevers sounds like a porn name.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Something seems up since the restart of student loan payments and Israel-Gaza in October.

Those things may not be helping Democrats, but I think it's hard to discern what impact they have in down-ballot races entirely.

[Progressive Pessimist]

My take on this is that Democrats' only chance to have a future in Florida is exclusively through special elections. I'll take it, but I am still certain that Florida is not worth large-scale investment by Democrats in the future.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Red avatars are cheering a slight underperformance of Biden on here.

It's the Florida bell curve. The last time we were able to celebrate any election in Florida was when the two Miami districts flipped Democrat for one term back in 2018.

The only real takeaway is that 6 week abortion bans are absolutely killing Republicans with women and there’s no point denying it.

TRUMP does not have this problem.

Yeah, the guy who is bragging about overturning Roe V. Wade won't have a problem.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Wow. Looks like PA/OK should balance out GA lol.

So lean D Pennsylvania, tossup Oklahoma, and safe R Georgia?