Special Election megathread (5/21: CA-20)

[Adam Griffin]

As of now, turnout in Cuyahoga is at 14.92%.



Highest turnout precincts thus far in Cuyahoga:



Turnout by city:

[wbrocks67]

Pretty good. Turnout was ~65k in 2018 and ~77k in 2020 I believe.

[Adam Griffin]

Ran the turnout figures by city above for Cuyahoga alone in DRA. Not a huge difference, but the areas with higher turnout as a bloc are majority-white, while the areas with below turnout are majority-black.

Cuyahoga Cities (as of 5:45 PM ET):
Above Average Turnout: VAP 53.6% White, 41.3% Black; Biden +61.2
Below Average Turnout: VAP 50.1% Black, 40.3% White; Biden +57.1

[GeneralMacArthur]

There's yet another mainstream media article -- this one in WaPo -- presenting this race with the lazy "old establishment vs. young progressives" framing that simply isn't accurate at all, and demonizes the establishment for wanting to "stop Nina Turner for the crime of speaking her mind" and "pouring dark money into the district."  Like most other articles, this one doesn't even tell you the name of Turner's opponent (fyi -- it's "Shontel Brown")

I swear, the media is so hungry for another round of Dems In Disarray stories, they may as well just be getting talking points from the Turner campaign and printing them in article form.  I can't wait for this race to be completely forgotten about if Turner loses.  And then in a few months we'll have the next "battle for the soul of the Democratic Party", as we forget all about this one, just as we forgot about all the other losses suffered by progressive candidates in earlier cycles.

Of course, if Turner wins, it's the end of the Democratic establishment as we know it, as progressives will now control (gasp) 7 backbench seats.

[Adam Griffin]

Turnout in Cuyahoga now at 15.99% (6:28 PM ET): 67,419 ballots cast (40,974 cast today).

There'll be more voters in this contest in Cuyahoga alone than in all of OH-11 in the 2018 Democratic primary (65,905). Likely on track for 73-75k ballots total out of Cuyahoga alone (with perhaps another 7-10k out of Summit). For reference, there were 78k (CD-wide) in the 2020 primary. Fairly high turnout for a special it would seem.

[Morning in Atlas]

Brown is still pretty progressive.

To be fair, this is true. I'm about 99% sure Brown isn't going to vote to defund schools that let trans kids play sports like Manchin did, and I don't think her voting record is going to be marginally different from Turner's.

OH-11 is a battle for the soul of the party, but on a stylistic level. I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm backing Nina to rebuke the forces backing Brown.

[Adam Griffin]

Looks like we'll reach 17% turnout in Cuyahoga. Still no news on Summit.

[Gracile]

https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1422705234686664719

[Adam Griffin]

Summit County gives us our first results:

Turner wins in-person 52-56
Brown wins mail 58-36

[Matty]

Brown leading 52-45 in initial 2k vote dump

[SnowLabrador]

Brown now up by 20 points. This is disappointing.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

Oh damn.

[Adam Griffin]

Cuyahoga (all mail):

[Adam Griffin]

Literally everything at the moment is early vote (all mail in Cuyahoga; about 50/50 in Summit, with Turner winning in-person there versus Brown winning mail), and it shouldn't be surprising to anybody that Brown would do very well with older voters - who use mail ballots disproportionately. I wouldn't read too much into this yet (though these numbers aren't great for Turner).

[Thunder98 🇮🇱 🤝 🇵🇸]

Trump's pick is leading in the primary so far. Still very early though.

[NOVA Green]

@adamgriffin

Any useful benchmarks for us?

[Nyvin]

Literally everything at the moment is early vote (all mail in Cuyahoga; about 50/50 in Summit, with Turner winning in-person there versus Brown winning mail), and it shouldn't be surprising to anybody that Brown would do very well with older voters - who use mail ballots disproportionately. I wouldn't read too much into this yet (though these numbers aren't great for Turner).

Also the vast majority of the vote was made in person on election day.

[wbrocks67]

Literally everything at the moment is early vote (all mail in Cuyahoga; about 50/50 in Summit, with Turner winning in-person there versus Brown winning mail), and it shouldn't be surprising to anybody that Brown would do very well with older voters - who use mail ballots disproportionately. I wouldn't read too much into this yet (though these numbers aren't great for Turner).

We're already at over 25% of total turnout.

[DrScholl]

If Turner loses this race it is probably because she chose to make it too much about being progressive as opposed to making it more local. This most certainly isn't a local race, but areas like Cleveland and Akron suffering from job losses and population decline want to have a representative that knows their issues.

[Lief 🗽]

STOP THE COUNT!

[wbrocks67]

Brown is still pretty progressive.

To be fair, this is true. I'm about 99% sure Brown isn't going to vote to defund schools that let trans kids play sports like Manchin did, and I don't think her voting record is going to be marginally different from Turner's.

OH-11 is a battle for the soul of the party, but on a stylistic level. I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm backing Nina to rebuke the forces backing Brown.

the "forces backing Brown" are also in the Democratic party too, though. Clyburn, Clinton, etc. all deserve as much of a voice as AOC and Bernie.

[Adam Griffin]

No idea about benchmarks, but Cuyahoga has 26k early votes in all and around 19k have already been reported in Cuyahoga - with no early in-person counted. I'd guess virtually all of the Cuyahoga mail ballots are now counted.

Looks like the Cuyahoga and Summit VBM percentages are similar (Brown +20), so I guess I'd say Turner needs to emulate her early in-person margins in Summit for Cuyahoga as well (winning them at minimum), and then barnstorming with ED vote.

[Oryxslayer]

Thread Title is going to end up being rather awkward I think.

[wbrocks67]

Interested to see how Election Day breaks down, given that Brown was the one with late momentum.

[Adam Griffin]

NYT showing an extra 7,500 votes all of a sudden out of Cuyahoga I'm not seeing on the election board websites, with Turner winning those 53-47.

Now 53-40 Brown overall (if accurate).

EDIT: WaPo showing them too.