Special Election megathread (6/11: OH-6, 6/25: CO-4)

[Tintrlvr]

The main question I have is why Fudge even wanted to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first place.

She didn’t. She wanted Agriculture and she spoke publicly about how she thinks black Cabinet members are often shunted to HUD.

To be fair, it would quite odd for a Congresswoman from a clearly entirely urban district to become Secretary of Agriculture. I suppose the Democrats are rather lacking in districts that include substantial amounts of farmland these days, but if there was going to be a black Congressperson who became Secretary of Agriculture, surely it would be someone like Bennie Thompson or Terri Sewell who actually represents a lot of farmers (though I don't think either of them in particular has focused much on agricultural issues).

[Tintrlvr]

Columbia seems to be done? 65-35 Ryan

+15 Delgado in 2018
+24 Delgado in 2020

So that can't be right unless Ryan is insanely overperforming in really blue areas

The number of votes is way too low for Columbia to be done.

[Tintrlvr]

Duchess appears to be done. Ryan +1.4 there.

Delgado won 5.5 in 2018 and it basically matched his district share.

Delgado won 10 there in 2020 and beat it districtwide by 2

Do we know how Biden did in Duchess?

Where are you getting this?

Just going off of the old NYT pages for NY-19 in 2018 and 2020

Dangerous because NYT doesn't always update for final results once a race is called.

[Tintrlvr]

I wonder how many absentees are left to count as well from Sunday, Monday and today.

New York also only requires that absentee ballots be postmarked by election day, so there will be late arrivals that can't have been counted yet. For late arrivals, we're talking maybe 1,000 late ballots total across the district, but they will apparently be at least 75% Ryan based on what we saw earlier in the night, so that could make the difference in a very close race.

[Tintrlvr]

I also wonder about affidavit ballots, which also won't be counted until later. Because of New York's new ballot rules, you can no longer (as of this year, and different from 2020 and 2021 so it will likely catch some people) cast a regular ballot in person and override your absentee ballot request. If you requested an absentee ballot and then try to vote in person, you have to cast an affidavit ballot, but it will still be counted if your absentee ballot is never returned. I imagine that group will also be solidly Democratic given how absentee ballots have skewed, though harder to be certain, but there may be more than usual because of the rules change.

[Tintrlvr]

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.

[Tintrlvr]

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 reports most of its votes. I think Ryan finishes the night up around 2k votes, which should get padded slightly by late absentees and affidavit ballots.

[Tintrlvr]

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.

[Tintrlvr]

Same old story here as in MN-01 and NE-01.

GOP did a bit better on the margins in their areas but the turnout in blue areas was just simply much better.

37.6k votes out of 182k in Ulster- 20.6% of the population voted
25.1k votes out of 296k in Dutchess- 8.4% of the population voted

If that trend holds up in November it sure as hell won't be red wave, Democrats will keep the Senate and might hold the House.

This is a district where the Democrats are wealthy and high-propensity, but that is honestly crazy differential turnout even accounting for that.

I think you're comparing to all of Dutchess County, but a quite populous corner in the SW of the county is in the old NY-18 instead of the old NY-19.

[Tintrlvr]

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

Ulster County is the center of the Catskills tourist area from New York City, so it's heavy with second homes and former NYC residents living out rural fantasies. Kingston, the largest town in the county, is the main urban hub for the Catskills.

It is also home to the famous Woodstock, so it has a significant "aging hippie" vibe in places. New Paltz, one of the larger towns, is home to the notoriously liberal SUNY-New Paltz and is the town where you might recall the college student Green Party mayor in maybe 2002 or so (edit: It was 2004) presiding over a bunch of same-sex marriages, a scene that back then felt right out of the hippie towns of northern coastal California. Ulster County is a bit of an odd duck on the East Coast in that way.

Finally, it has a long history with specifically Reform Jewish synagogues and communities holding retreats in the area going back to the 1950s, and being specifically heavy with Reform Jews distinguishes it a lot from the larger but much more conservative Orthodox Jewish communities to the south in Rockland and Orange Counties.



Columbia County is somewhat different. The city of Hudson, the only city of any size in the county, is a very racially mixed town with a large historical artist presence that continues to this day and is probably the most Democratic settlement in either county. The areas immediately around Hudson are actually quite conservative and almost certainly voted for Molinaro, but then along the border with Massachusetts you get a lot of similar culture to what is found over the border into the Berkshires.

[Tintrlvr]

I think we've finally gotten to the point where I'd definitively rather be Peltola than Palin. While I'm unfamiliar with who those last outstanding ballots should favor in Alaska, it's not hard to imagine that Alaska's "questioned ballots" - like North Carolina's "provisional ballots" - will generally match the rest of the votes in the state (or maybe even favor the Democrat).

Right now, Peltola's up 16,347 votes and Begich has 52,320 that can be transferred under the instant runoff. Palin will need to get ~66% of those votes to overtake Peltola, and that's without any ballot exhaustion. The two polls conducted after Gross dropped out by Alaska Survey Research showed Palin getting between 65% and 67% of the redistributed votes and both of those polls showed near identical first round numbers to what has occurred so far. Only a 7% ballot exhaustion puts Palin on the wrong side of those polls.

Even under the hypothetical where the Write-in votes break down in the same way as Begich's, that exhaustion only needs to go up to about 12%, which is in-line with regular exhaustion numbers in places that have been using ranked choice voting already.

It's still well within a tossup range - bad assumptions about who's favored in outstanding ballots or a minor polling error within the acceptable MoE could throw these estimates off - but I would rather be Peltola right now based on what data we do have.

Does anyone recall what the ballot exhaustion rate was in ME-02? I thought it was much higher than the ranges being cited, as much as 20-25%. Certainly the NYC mayoral primary had exhaustion rates that high, although it may not be as comparable a race. Certainly possible that Alaska voters are particularly good at figuring out ranked choice, but experience I thought had been that exhaustion was quite common, at least in the first election using the system.

[Tintrlvr]

I think we've finally gotten to the point where I'd definitively rather be Peltola than Palin. While I'm unfamiliar with who those last outstanding ballots should favor in Alaska, it's not hard to imagine that Alaska's "questioned ballots" - like North Carolina's "provisional ballots" - will generally match the rest of the votes in the state (or maybe even favor the Democrat).

Right now, Peltola's up 16,347 votes and Begich has 52,320 that can be transferred under the instant runoff. Palin will need to get ~66% of those votes to overtake Peltola, and that's without any ballot exhaustion. The two polls conducted after Gross dropped out by Alaska Survey Research showed Palin getting between 65% and 67% of the redistributed votes and both of those polls showed near identical first round numbers to what has occurred so far. Only a 7% ballot exhaustion puts Palin on the wrong side of those polls.

Even under the hypothetical where the Write-in votes break down in the same way as Begich's, that exhaustion only needs to go up to about 12%, which is in-line with regular exhaustion numbers in places that have been using ranked choice voting already.

It's still well within a tossup range - bad assumptions about who's favored in outstanding ballots or a minor polling error within the acceptable MoE could throw these estimates off - but I would rather be Peltola right now based on what data we do have.

Does anyone recall what the ballot exhaustion rate was in ME-02? I thought it was much higher than the ranges being cited, as much as 20-25%. Certainly the NYC mayoral primary had exhaustion rates that high, although it may not be as comparable a race. Certainly possible that Alaska voters are particularly good at figuring out ranked choice, but experience I thought had been that exhaustion was quite common, at least in the first election using the system.

This article suggests it was much, much higher than the 5-10% the AK-AL election is being modeled on. 62% of Poliquin supporters only ranked one candidate.

Right - I see it has 51% of ballots in 2018 having ranked only one candidate, with around 25% each from the independents (the only ones that were actually transferred in practice, so overall exhaustion was about 25%) and even higher for partisan voters. Now, here with two Republicans maybe exhaustion is a bit lower, but I have to imagine the ranges cited are far too low. (On the other hand, I'm also a little skeptical that there will be as many Begich-Peltola votes as some of the pollsters are indicating, so maybe Palin could still be competitive on a 15-20% exhaustion rate.)

[Tintrlvr]

https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1605427368117637120

Is...this legal?

It's not *illegal*, but it should result in loss of the tax exemption. Of course, the IRS has been asleep at  the wheel on politicking by churches for ages now.