State Legislature Special Election Mega Thread

[Brittain33]

So on average Dems are seeing a 14 point swing in races or so, yes?

An unweighted average of all the special elections since Trumpageddon has been an 11-point swing from 2016 Presidential.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C2MVeM2K7WgqmJw5RCQbWyTo2u73CX1pI8zw_G-7BJo/edit#gid=0

[Brittain33]

Dems got a 12-point swing in that seat.

Still, getting less than 35% is pretty pathetic.

It's a district the Democrats usually don't even field a candidate in during General Elections.   

Is it pathetic that Republicans can't get 20% in San Francisco?

San Francisco doesn't matter.

Does Tennessee, if that's the case? It's like the 45th state on Dems' target list for any office.

[Brittain33]

"Unofficial result from Sandown: Lerner (D) 294; Headd (R) 236; Jarvis 17: Big upset Democrat Lerner wins special #nhpolitics via @jdistaso
0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
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[Brittain33]

Unofficial: Lerner (D) 901; Headd (R) 862; Jarvis (L) 41

Lerner wins 50%-48% vs. Trump beating Clinton 59%-36%.

+25% swing in win margin toward the Democrats over Trump-Clinton!

[Brittain33]

The insurer’s allure
For valor were pure Kari Lerner (D, Rock 4)

[Brittain33]

David Nir is updating the DKos chart as I type and the swings to R in the Florida seats are deceptively huge. -14% for Senate, -37% for House against Clinton-Trump.

[Brittain33]

Apparently Rockingham HD 4 is the 4th most GOP seat in the entire state of New Hampshire.

Really? At only 59% Trump?

[Brittain33]

Why was the Dem performance so poor in the Florida House race yesterday? Was it because Diaz had his machine to pull out voters for the Senate race in his old district?

[Brittain33]

This is not news, but considering each of these senate districts has 80,000 people, turnout is absolutely pathetic.

[Brittain33]

What does that make the PVI, R+21 and R+19?

OK SD 37 is 67/27 Trump
OK SD 45 is 67/27 Trump
OK HD 76 is 65/30 Trump

OK SD 45 voted 56-43 Republican in this special election, a 26 point swing since 2016.

I don't expect a win in any of these special elections tonight.

[Brittain33]

O'Hara is leading by 12 votes. He's favored to win but it does feel a little tight for us to be writing off the Dem, no?

[Brittain33]

The crazy thing is I'm sure the campaigns know, based on the last 3 precincts, who is going to win.

[Brittain33]

D up 44 with 2 precincts out

[Brittain33]

That was unexpectedly thrilling.

[Brittain33]

Twitter had several minutes of premature celebration.

[Brittain33]

1 precinct left. D up 14 votes.

[Brittain33]

31 VOTES

[Brittain33]

Did someone mention this upthread... she's married to a woman and will be Oklahoma's first LGBT legislator.

[Brittain33]

Looks like the Dem candidate conceded: https://twitter.com/PeterJasinski53/status/938224575409737733

Wow.

Tweet says "Not sure on that yet."

[Brittain33]

I think the results in MA is not sooo surprising. Clinton won it only by 8 points and Obama only by 5. Reps hold State Senate seats in bluer places. Very low turnout was an issue for sure

It's a reasonable result for this district, but atypical for 2017 I think. I wonder what could have driven this.

Is there any chance the Stan Rosenberg scandal hurt the Democrat?

[Brittain33]

Atlas red avatars when Republicans win abysmally low turnout special elections: "Irrelevant, it was low turnout!"

Um, literally no one has said this.

Anyway, the wave talk is mostly driven by what happened in Virginia in a general election, although the wins in 67% Trump seats in Oklahoma is certainly good for morale.

[Brittain33]

There's some indication that the "wave" has slowed down recently. Special elections and the generic ballot are not looking as rosy for Democrats as they were 3 weeks ago.

A Q-poll came out literally today showing the Democrats with a 14% lead on the generic ballot.

I appreciate your dedication to what you're doing here, but don't try that with me, sweetheart.

[Brittain33]

You guys might want to read the post right above yours.

Yes, where he said low turnout was a factor, just as it was in those Oklahoma specials. I missed "irrelevant" though - that's the part you added.

I live in Massachusetts and I'm genuinely curious why the R won here.

[Brittain33]

LimoLiberal has nothing of value to contribute, it seems. He may have to be the next one to go on ignore for the first time since Harding.

Good idea.

[Brittain33]

All these races are irrelevant. The turnouts are so ridiculously low that you can get extreme flukes like this Massachusetts race and the Oklahoma races easily. If you're going to build your case for a wave, you'd be best off using generic ballot polls and the Virginia results.

I agree with you up to a point, but it's hard to call the Oklahoma races flukes when we've had so many of them and seen so many swing heavily D (and a few modestly D, I grant). The results match what we saw in KS-4, an area similar to Oklahoma. I would be surprised if we saw the kinds of monster swings we see in special elections in November '18, but if they indicate depressed Republican turnout and energized Dem turnout, that's meaningful.

Like I said, I am actually curious why the R won here in Massachusetts. Whether meaningful or not, it's an atypical result for 2017. It's different from the results in NH, for example. But in Massachusetts, the Dems are incredibly dominant in the legislature, so a Republican can make more of a claim to independence from "the swamp" or from Trump than he can in NH.