NY-22 GSG (D, Conole internal): Conole +1

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I’ve been worried about this one ever since we nominated the Onondaga County (Syracuse) based Conole rather than an Oneida County (Utica, Rome) based one.  Even weak Republican House candidates in a Democratic-leaning year will likely over-perform in Onondaga County to at least some degree despite generally losing the county (it’s the raw vote margin that matters) and as a result, you can’t get blown out of the water in Oneida County.  

I worry about the potential for Conole to only win Onondaga by like 2-3%, get crushed everywhere else, and lose by like 2%.  Sure enough, that poll with Williams leading showed Williams with a double-digit lead in Oneida County.  If that actually comes to pass, and that’s a big if, it could be really bad news for Conole.  However, I am reluctant to read too much into county-level cross tabs for a House race poll.  

That all being said, it’d be silly doomerism to act like Democrats have definitely blown this race.  And it’s even sillier to act like this seat being competitive means we’re looking at a Republican wave (but more on that in the next paragraph).  This seat is pretty clearly a tossup at this point (which is admittedly frustrating b/c it shouldn’t be) with both parties having decidedly unimpressive nominees (a bit odd how weak both parties’ fields were) and Conole could very well end up winning (as could Williams).  If I had to guess at this point I’d say Conole narrowly wins by like 1-2 points, but that the seat changes hands at least once this decade before a stronger Democrat retakes it and finally gets entrenched.  

One other important thing to keep in mind is that the Biden percentage here is very misleading and makes this seat seem much more Democratic than it is in reality.  For one thing, it has a Cook PVI of only D+1.  The better way to think of this seat is as an ancestrally Republican swing district that probably has a not insignificant number of de facto #NeverTrump Republicans where both parties nominated weak candidates.

Another thing I’d be curious about is whether Pollster can provide us with any insight about whether the firm that released this internal is one that has worked to correct non-response bias given that he’s indicated that some of the Democratic firms have done a lot to address that issue.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The weak fields here don’t make sense at all. Democrats have two state senators covering the area, and neither ran. Weird.

Yeah, I don’t know why, but both parties had extremely underwhelming fields.  I think the Democratic field might be b/c everyone assumed Brindisi would run and when he didn’t, there were already several C-listers who had been running for a bit and locking down support.  With the Republicans, I guess I could see folks getting scared off by the Biden margin.  Neither of those explanations really satisfy me though tbh.  Both parties dropped the ball here with candidate recruitment.