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

[ProgressiveModerate]

Also one interesting note is that based on 2020 Pres, NY-19 would've been very very close to the median House seat. This is why I don't think the House is *completely* gone for Dems.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Regardless, New York’s election results reporting is so horrible. Wow.

This does seem to be better than 2020 which was an absolute disaster. The early votes took forever to county and even like 2 days after the election NY was only like Biden + 15 iirc.

[ProgressiveModerate]

This seems to be a battle of swings vs turnout. Generally speaking, Molinaro seems to be slightly outpacing Trump's margin, especially in redder areas, however, the blue parts of the district are seeing the best turnout and Ryan isn't really losing ground in the bluest areas.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Most of the remaining votes are in Otsego and Rensselaer Counties. I think people are overfocused on the places that have already mostly reported. Both counties should flip to Molinaro in the final result, but not by huge margins, and I don't think he can make up 5,400 votes from them alone, though there are of course other votes scattered around elsewhere as well. We'll see.

At best he can make up about 3k votes from those 2 counties alone which is being extremely generous. The counties (in NY-19) collectively net Trump 5k votes in 2020 but obviously lower turnout won't allow for that. Molinaro will need to net a few extra votes from some scattered unreported precincts (late absentees will almost surely break Ryan).

[ProgressiveModerate]

Sean T has declared Dems the moral winner, lol

https://twitter.com/SeanTrende/status/1562276217222569986?s=20&t=KUtiBCr6vDv...

Still I never understood why Molinaro was an "A+" recruit. It just seems like he was given that label because he wasn't a complete dumpster wreck (like many GOP candidates have been) and he's fairly young, charismatic, and attractive. That doesn't inherently make him an A+ recruit.

[ProgressiveModerate]

No call tonight?

I think it's mostly due to confusion on what's actually out. The way DDHQ and NYT report these things is still pretty terrible where their %'s are always changing

If the NYT results left are accurate, I'd be pretty confident in declaring Ryan the winner. However, we've seen several examples where they've been way off.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Oh wait now we’re at 119.3K on DDHQ and Ryan is still up by 4.2K votes, 51.7 - 48.3%.

That was Rensselaer County reporting most of its vote. Otsego is the main one outstanding now. Then there should be only a few stragglers here and there, favoring Molinaro but there are just not that many votes once Otsego finishes. I think Ryan finishes the night up around 2k votes, which should get padded slightly by late absentees and affidavit ballots.

This is what I am beginning to think as well, either candidate by the tiniest of hairs at the end of the night and then then weekend unprocessed votes give it to Ryan. Which begs the question...why? Molinaro is outperforming Trump and most benchmarks where he needs to.

 The reason why Ryan is ahead is basically all down to Ulster and Columbia having higher turnout than the rest of the district to a substantial degree. Which matches with both previous specials and our overall expectations: Dem areas are punching above their weight in strongholds and suburbs even though they are slightly losing ground in marginal regions and GOP ones. Essentially, the environment is would still be tilting towards the GOP, but the situation in the past few months - mainly thanks to the Court - has activated partisans who might not usually have participated in midterm elections.

Seriously, a universal theme through MN-01, NE-01, NY-23, and NY-19 has been a further increase in partisanship from 2020 which kind of concerns me as historically special elections tend to see a slight decrease. What is notable though is that MN-01, NE-01, NY-23, and NY-19 are all remarkably similar districts from several standpoints. I really wish we could've gotten a more diverse slate of special elections post-dobbs.

[ProgressiveModerate]

So how big of a deal is this win? What was the PVI?

Pretty big deal. The district was Biden + 1.5 and was slightly to the right of teh tipping point on both the new and old lines. It also seems like Ryan could even narrowly beat Bidens + 1.5 margin.

Another important dynamic was the turnout which is really what allowed Ryan to win even as Molinaro overperformed in his hom base of Duthcess County and some rural areas.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Wait, NYT just changed to >95% for NY-23 and it's only R+6.4!

5% swing from 2020 which would match what we saw in NE-01 and MN-01

There are a handful of votes left from Ontario, Chemung and Tioga Counties there, but the margin will end up around R+8 or so, which is pretty bad for a Trump+11 district. Ithaca really turned out.

I'm shook, this is now the 2nd time in a special this summer that the *college area* of all places really outperformed expectations. Did not expect the youngs to be the ones turning out, but a great sign for Ds this fall.

The colleges are still out right now. These are the workers, teachers, shopowners, and staff who all service the transient population...and the super-partisans who choose to live in such a place. So yeah, the exact type of population primed for action after the Court chucked Roe.

isn't college back in session this week for most?

This week is the time when many are moving into their dorms in stuff. College hasn't officially started.

[ProgressiveModerate]

NYBOE suprisingly did a pretty good job tonight. Race was called and votes counted within a reasonable time with not obvious mistakes or errors.

Yeah I think Kathy and the supermajorities passed a bill that aimed to make the process more efficient and while it’s not perfect it’s way better than what we saw in 2020. I think my main critical now is the lack of clarity on how many ballots are outstanding but tbh I think some of that needs to be fixed on the county level (and late arriving absentees means you never completely know)

[ProgressiveModerate]

One thing that’s worth noting about these post-Dobbs special elections:

NE-01, MN-01, NY-23, and to a lesser degree NY-19 are all remarkably simillar districts:

-NE-01, MN-01, and NY-23 all voted nearly identically in 2016 and 2020 Pres
-All 4 districts are very white and culturally “northern”
-All 4 districts are predominantly rural with Dem support centralized around a mid sized city with heavy college influence
-Not so much with NY-19, but in the other 3 the rural areas are very dense and ruby red
-All 4 districts have clear redistricting successors
-All 4 districts are outside some larger metro (MSP, Omaha, NYC, and Buffalo) which may have some remote influence on the districts politics.

And in all 4 special elections we saw a simillar theme with the results:

-Dems mildly outperformed Biden in the district overall
-Turnout was solid for a special election, but obviously nowhere near what we’d expect come Nov
-Turnout is strongest in already D communities in the district and weaker in R areas
-Ds really juiced up margins out of these left-shifting midsized cities (or in the case of NY-19 tourism areas)
-Republicans matched or improved on Trumps margins in rural areas
-Canidates saw notable home boosts if their politics was specifically tied to a certain county

Im not saying we should ignore these results, but think about how simillar these 4 districts are out of all the possible House districts in the Country. What would happen in an exclusively well to do swingy urban/suburban district (VA-02, MN-02)? What would happen in a Southern rural black seat? (GA-02, NC-01), What would happen in a competative urban/suburban minority seat (CA-45, NV-04)? What would happen in a WWC district (PA-08, MI-08)

While we may be able to predict, there could be other dynamics going on in these other types of places that these special elections can’t tell us and it’s important to acknowledge that.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1562295564557066240

This is the correct take. Tonight's result showed that republicans won't have some huge popular vote win come November, or earn any kind of mandate. They'll get the House because of gerrymandering.

Ah hate how many times I have to say this but redistricting really only created on net an R + 2 bias which is def overcomeable. This won’t be like last decade where gerrymandering ensured a lock on the House for the GOP

[ProgressiveModerate]

It should probably give some pause that the formula here for Dem overperformance is (relatively) great turnout in Dem counties overwhelming weaker margins elsewhere. Would be pretty shocking to have similar turnout differential come November.

This is crucial. Some on here are going to be very disappointed when national turnout in November reaches 110-120m voters.

Well this means that 2010 and 2014 won't happen again because democrats aren't forgetting to vote lol

This isn’t accurate — Democrats didn’t "forget to vote" in 2010 and 2014, otherwise their defeats would have been a lot more resounding. When you examine the turnout differential in individual races on a county-by-county basis (e.g. VA-SEN 2014), you’ll see that the drop-off in turnout didn’t benefit Republicans at all — in some races/states, there’s even a case to be made that it hurt the GOP (e.g. MI/MN 2014). Henry County GA also couldn’t have flipped from Romney 2012 to Nunn/Carter 2014 if Democrats had stayed home en masse. This is mostly just a media narrative akin to the baseless "Republicans are afraid of high turnout because they know that they can’t win with it" which also flies in the face of those special elections, where Democrats have quite obviously been the ones benefiting from lower turnout, something that has been true for many cycles now, which is why I don’t get why we’re acting "surprised" every single time Democrats "outperform expectations" in a special election with a completely unrepresentative electorate. Under our current party coalitions, it’s basically always going to be the case that the more affluent, more college-educated, more suburban/urban, more engaged/emotionally invested (politically), and far better organized party does particularly well in this type of election and performs a few percentage points above the general (November) partisan baseline of a district — it’s the new normal and not some "surprise," and I’d never try to predict a special election based on how a district voted in a November election (or vice versa).

In 2010/2014, both sides had dreadful turnout but it's just Dems overall experienced a dropoff. Even in 2018 which was widely considered a D wave, Republicans still got 10 million more votes for US House than 2014, but Democrats got (25 million).

I think polarization would make it nearly impossible that one party has really strong turnout in a midterm while the other party's turnout completely crashes. In 2022, both parties will put up solid turnout for a midterm (comparable to 2018), it's really just a question of who's turnout is better.

And finally, one other factor to consider is that as recently as 2018, incumbent Dems who really weren't seriously targetted in the House were able to have 20 or even 30 point overperformances in a few cases which helped pad their national win margin. It's very unlikely either side will experience this in 2022 and the biggest overperformances in partisanship will be closer to 10 points.

[ProgressiveModerate]

So Ryan only won two counties which is pretty weird for a non-urban district. What are Ulster and Columbia counties like?

I get the impression that Ulster County is basically like Vermont, while Columbia is probably "to the left" on social issues while being fiscally moderate. Both counties lean Democratic, to varying degrees.
Torie would be able to speak with more eloquence on this topic, I feel.

Ulster County is very high in tourism and second homes from NYC folks. Def akin to many VT communities. Columbia is more of Massachusetts spillover

[ProgressiveModerate]

Apparently Della Pia swept every vote cast in Ithaca proper. It’s very rare for a candidate to win 100% of the vote in a batch of anything greater than about 30 votes. An 144 - 0 vote shows how toxic Rs are for these types of communities

[ProgressiveModerate]

Apparently Della Pia swept every vote cast in Ithaca proper. It’s very rare for a candidate to win 100% of the vote in a batch of anything greater than about 30 votes. An 144 - 0 vote shows how toxic Rs are for these types of communities

Sounds like a college precinct if you ask me...

Ithaca is the textbook definition of a college town.

Still you'd think there'd be bound to be that one student who came from a conservative religious family and votes reliably R or smtg.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Oh cute, Murkowski was there.

She also seemed genuinely happy. I’m 100% sure she ranked her above Palin.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Dems prolly would've won the VA state House on the new maps. Rmbr in 2021 the old maps were used which were a previous R gerrymander and rmbr too population shifts almost exclusively favored Ds in VA.

In the State Sen, the path is very clear. Dems need 21 seats for a majority, and there are 20 seats that are over Biden + 17 (and all went McAuliffe) and should be pretty safe. From there they need one of the Biden + 13 Loudon seat that narrowly went Youngkin, the Biden + 9 northern Newport News seat (also Youngkin), or the 42% black Biden + 7 rural seat (that went to Youngkin), or a possible suprise somewhere else. Rs basically have to sweep the table to win the State Sen.

The State House is far more complex given the insane number of seats (100). Tbh, there aren't many competative outer-Nova seats as many here seem to imply; the dropoff between NOVA and rurals is pretty sharp. According to DRA, McAuliffe won 48 seats, most of which seem pretty secure, so again, it seems like a case where Rs have to run the table to win.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Dems prolly would've won the VA state House on the new maps. Rmbr in 2021 the old maps were used which were a previous R gerrymander and rmbr too population shifts almost exclusively favored Ds in VA.

In the State Sen, the path is very clear. Dems need 21 seats for a majority, and there are 20 seats that are over Biden + 17 (and all went McAuliffe) and should be pretty safe. From there they need one of the Biden + 13 Loudon seat that narrowly went Youngkin, the Biden + 9 northern Newport News seat (also Youngkin), or the 42% black Biden + 7 rural seat (that went to Youngkin), or a possible suprise somewhere else. Rs basically have to sweep the table to win the State Sen.

The State House is far more complex given the insane number of seats (100). Tbh, there aren't many competative outer-Nova seats as many here seem to imply; the dropoff between NOVA and rurals is pretty sharp. According to DRA, McAuliffe won 48 seats, most of which seem pretty secure, so again, it seems like a case where Rs have to run the table to win.

Giving Dems every HOD seat that was Biden + 11 or better gets them 52 seats.  Doing that in the state senate gets them 21.  If you give them the Biden + 8 SD-24 in the Newport News area where Monty Mason is almost certainly running for re-election, they have 22 there.

Yeah pretty sure HoD flips back unless 2023 is a disaster, and Senate would prolly take even more. I wonder if Dems will ever reach a supermajority this decade? Iirc, Biden either won just under or just over a supermajority of seats in both chambers.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I find it really sad how not even 30k people in a district of over 800k people voted.

[ProgressiveModerate]

This result is not surprising to me given that McClellan locked up virtually all of the establishment support in a state like Virginia which has a lot of establishment-oriented voters (and a firehouse primary only makes this more pronounced).

I like McClellan and believe she will make a great addition to congress.

Statewide she would be weaker. Likely would defeat a hard conservative, but would lose to youngkin types. Mainstream conservative would depend on the climate.

But she can pretty much have that richmond/ southside VA  area seat for life.

If VA-04 is hypothetically condensed to just metro Richmond one day (and hence less black), could she become vulnerable to a primary from a "white liberal" type? She seems pretty inoffensive so my guess would be no.