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

[MT Treasurer]

Literally Cori Bush is the only progressive congressional candidate as of late who has managed to defy concrete trends thus far in any majority-minority (in particular, majority-black) district. Everybody else either won a plurality in a very crowded field and/or with very low turnout, ran against absolutely toxic white incumbents in majority-minority districts, didn't attract notable establishment involvement until the very end/not at all, or lost. Even for Bush, one could argue her name recognition, her opponent's disregard in general and the establishment not taking the contest seriously until the very end were all variables that helped her overcome an otherwise inevitable reality.

For most districts like this, it is obvious that any victory for a progressive involves running against a damaged incumbent and not setting off too many alarm bells (i.e. massive fundraising numbers or Big Online Followings) until the end of the campaign. Bush, AOC and Bowman all managed to pull this off to varying degrees.

I agree with this completely, and the idea that any Democrat from SC of all places wouldn’t be aware of those dynamics is funny. Turner was always going to be in trouble as soon as 'establishment'-aligned groups put a target on her back and the race became more and more nationalized.

[MT Treasurer]

Why are people acting like Brown is moderate? She supports Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

1. Only the most delusional, contrarian, out-of-touch crazies on the political (and largely online) fringe actually consider Brown a "moderate."

2. Everyone and their mother (in either party) can get away with portraying themselves as a "moderate", "centrist", "bipartisan," etc. these days even when they’re anything but. (Note that I’m not saying that Brown ever pretended to be moderate, I’m just pointing out that the term has lost all meaning.)

[MT Treasurer]

If you’re a Democrat in a district which contains (a) industrial towns where Democratic strength has historically been powered by economic & class issues, (b) culturally conservative areas where Democrats have relied on local organization/branding in the past, or (c) a large share of non-college-educated voters with no high-density suburban areas or college towns to offset a collapse among the former, you should still be extremely worried because those are the types of districts that will be hardest by any GOP victory, not places like NE-01. We’re still going to see some GOP improvement over Trump's showing in many suburban districts (although more so in lower-density, whiter areas), but for people like Don Bacon (who I always thought was more vulnerable than many thought), a win in 2022 is basically the last ride.

[MT Treasurer]

With most special elections, it’s important not too read too much (if anything) into them because unrepresentative turnout patterns, local issues, and down-ballot shifts lagging behind national/federal trends don’t really allow for any predictive accuracy. However, then there are some special elections which are very accurate barometers of fall elections and have to be considered a sign of things to come, with you being delusional if you close your eyes to reality.

I’ll let you know in an hour or two which category this one falls into after studying the issues and the quality of the candidates a little.

[MT Treasurer]

You know I'm just not going to argue with cons coping about how great this MN-01 result is for them anymore. All I'm gonna say is that I truly hope that the NRCC agrees with you that there are no warning signs here because if they do I'm going to have a very fun November.

No "con" is saying that this is a "great" result for Republicans, but there have been many contradictory signs this cycle. I’m still trying to make sense of it, but one suspicion which I’ve had for quite some time is that people are seriously underestimating how much the party coalitions are actually shifting and how reliable the GOP has become on high turnout (this is hard for many to accept because the media has been equating high turnout with Democratic strength for over two decades, including whenever the subject of "voter suppression" comes up). There are two consistent patterns here: (a) Democrats surpassing expectations in special election after special election; (b) Republicans winning the turnout race handily in virtually all swing state primaries (by margins which cannot be explained away by there being fewer competitive primaries on the R side or voters somehow being sufficiently tuned in to know which primary is "important" or which general election is "truly competitive").

The big problem with all the analyses which place great emphasis on special elections in general and the 2020-PRES -> 2021/2022-SE swing in particular is that they implicitly assume that the electorate that tends to turn out for these special elections actually reflects the November electorate. If that’s the case, then yes, November is going to be very disappointing for the GOP. If that’s not the case, however, I suspect we may be looking at yet another traditional indicator (ground game, fundraising, polling, etc.) which has been shattered in the Trump era.

[MT Treasurer]

It's interesting how mediocre the GOP's special election performances have been so far during the Biden era, especially when compared to how the Democrats did post-Trump inauguration leading up to the 2018 midterms. The KS-04 special in 2017 saw a 26 point shift leftward, SC-05 saw a 17 point shift, and PA-18, which voted for Trump by nearly 20 points, was an outright flip. We've seen nothing close to that so far from the Republicans and yet we're supposed to believe that they're going to have a 2010-style red wave election victory.

Yes, this is a very important point — were you never surprised by the magnitude of those shifts, esp. when comparing them with the November results?

Democrats won the HPV by ~7 points in November 2018, a swing of about 8 (House PV) or 5 (presidential PV) percentage points from 2016, whereas their overperformances in those special elections tended to be at least twice as large. Now it’s up to you -

Hypothesis I (conventional interpretation) — The swing in those special elections was particularly pronounced mostly because the more energized party (quite clearly the Democrats in 2018) tends to turn out at a higher rate in special elections.

Hypothesis II (unconventional interpretation) — The swing in those special elections was particularly pronounced mostly due to unrepresentative turnout patterns which speak to a fundamental change in party coalitions in a way that benefits Democrats more so than to different levels of base engagement/excitement.

Can you make a case for hypothesis I? Sure. Can you definitely rule out hypothesis II? I don’t think so.

This is where primary turnout comes into play, and this is where there has been a marked shift in favor of Republicans since 2018/2020. Make of that what you will (we’ll all find out soon enough).

Even accounting for a potential "inherent D bias" in special elections, however, I agree that the HPV will be a lot closer to GOP +1-2 than +4-6, resembling 2016 more so than 2010/2014, but still a problematic outcome for Democrats because they likely still lose the House, a few swing state governorships, and (in my opinion) the Senate even if the popular vote is fairly close overall.

[MT Treasurer]

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).

[MT Treasurer]

Not worth reading much if anything into special elections, but I do think Republicans losing Alaska for good is going to happen sooner rather than later. In my view, Blue Alaska is probably more likely than Blue Texas by the end of the decade.

[MT Treasurer]

As I've said many times before, I think it's fair to extrapolate how this became a referendum on Palin, even with the unique electoral system. As such I think it fits into the theme of this year's elections when it comes to the candidates being nominated.

Other stuff like Biden, Dobbs, and the economy are probably mostly irrelevant though.

I disagree. Peltola getting 40%+ in the first round likely shouldn't have even been possible in a red environment.

Mark Begich only lost by two points in what many consider a "red wave" year, and that was with November turnout. Alaska isn’t nearly as Republican as many here make it out to be, and it’s had one of the sharpest and most consistent Democratic trends in the country since 2000.

It’s still an impressive win for Democrats, though (and for the record, I think it’s unwise to write Peltola off in November even if Republicans do well nationally).

[MT Treasurer]

This looks like a very high turnout election

Which largely works to the benefit of Republicans now and likely contributed to this showing. I don’t think it’s representative of future special elections.

[MT Treasurer]

Off-year elections just don't mean much. They have very different turnout and very different candidates.

So you’re saying this isn’t representative of a presidential electorate?

Kentucky 2023:

% of total 2019 vote cast:

Jefferson County - 92% (Beshear raw vote: 96% of 2019)
Fayette County - 92% (Beshear raw vote: 101% of 2019)

Breathitt County - 77% (Beshear raw vote: 93% of 2019)
Perry County - 75% (Beshear raw vote: 93% of 2019)
Lee County - 74% (Beshear raw vote: 104% of 2019)

(the last three rural counties were where Beshear got some of his strongest swings from 2019)