State Legislature Special Election Megathread v2

[ON Progressive]

Do we have any special elections for tomorrow night?

No. We hardly have any state legislative specials after those specials in Wisconsin a couple weeks ago because Election Day is so close, you may as well schedule any special elections for Election Day.

[ON Progressive]

Gallego up by THREE with eight precincts reporting.

No, that's the early vote only. Look at the rightmost columns:


RACE   NAME      PARTY   EARLY VOTES   PERCENT   TOTAL VOTES   PERCENT
State Senator, District 19               
Peter P. (Pete) Flores   REP   9,893   49.99%   10,109   50.53%
Pete Gallego   DEM   9,896   50.00%   9,896   49.46%
-----------      -----------   
Race Total      19,789      20,005   
Precincts Reported      8   of   339 Precincts      2.36%

Wow. Republicans are going to flip a Clinton +11 SD in Texas. Blue wave?

Lmao @ using one special election to say "BLUE WAVE DEAD"

[ON Progressive]

The evidence is mounting, and it ain't pretty:


1. TX-23 polls show Hurd easily winning and Latino turnout weak.
2. SD-19 special elections shows massive swings to Republicans in heavily Latino areas.
3. Polls/primaries in CA-21, CA-39, CA-25, FL-26, and FL-27 all show Democrats disastrously and devastatingly underperforming Hillary numbers - by a lot.
4. New Nevada polls show Democrats collapsing, Arizona Senate race has become very tight after Sinema seemed to have a clear lead for months.
5. Ted Cruz is surging in Texas.

The blue wave will be irrelevant in Hispanic heavy areas. Thus, I am changing my rating of the House from Lean D (where I have had it for about a month) to Lean R. Once sure pickups, like TX-23, CA-25, CA-39, and FL-27 look drastically different and democratic candidates are even struggling in sunbelt districts with a small minority population like TX-07 and AR-02.

The blue wave is over.

Let me break down this trainwreck of a post one step at a time, even though it's not going to convince concern trolls like you about anything:

1. Polls can't tell you about Latino turnout at all. I hate when people explain poll results by saying "THERE'S LOW LATINO/(insert whatever subgroup) TURNOUT IN THIS AREA IN MIDTERMS" because polls can't predict turnout.

2. How much of that SD-19 swing was because turnout dropped hard for an obscure special election, thus meaning the electorate could've been much whiter than the actual demographics? It'll probably be a significantly more Hispanic electorate in 2018, let alone 2020 when this seat comes back up again.

3. CA-21 was never on the board at all because that area has laughable turnout AND a strong incumbent. The CA-39 poll had Trump approval at even in a Clinton +9 seat which isn't believable at all. That was also probably our toughest of the OC seats. CA-25 is still a tossup, given that Knight is only up 3 and he's under 50 in a 42-52 Trump approval seat.

FL-26 was always going to be tough because the GOP incumbent is really well liked (and even that isn't preventing his race from being within 3 points AND below 50 against an opponent with 32% name recognition LOL), and the two FL-27 polls are internals. One of those internals is from McLaughlin, which is a notoriously terrible firm that's missed races by 30+ points consistently. The other is from a random firm I've never heard of, and it could very well be just being pushed out to tell people "DONATE TO ME!!!!!"

4. The Nevada polls are in line with what we've seen in other Nevada polls, and Nevada polls have a LONG history of underestimating Democrats, as this post by IceSpear shows: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=301205.msg6407307#msg6407307

5. What surge? We have two outlier polls with Cruz +9 and O'Rourke +2, which cancel out largely to be a Cruz +4-5 race. Cruz +4 or Cruz +5 would be very much in line with what the race has been stuck at for months.

[ON Progressive]

In other news it appears the Spanish translation for the ballots in TX Senate District 19  (a very hispanic district) were translated with Google Translate, giving the wrong translation for the word "run-off" as "drainage". So for many Spanish speakers the ballots informed them that there was an election drainage.

Why in God's name are they google translating ballots in TEXAS of all places? There's literally millions of Spanish speakers in Texas.

[ON Progressive]

A special election has been called for Tennessee's 32nd State Senate District. This seems to be mostly Memphis exurbs. The primary is on January 24 (anyone know why TN likes Thursday primaries?), and the general election will be on March 12.

https://www.localmemphis.com/news/local-news/special-election-set-for-tn-state-senate-district-32-seat/1611354953

2012 President: 71-28 Romney
2016 President: 68-28 Trump

I would put this at Safe R, of course.

[ON Progressive]

Since nobody posted about these, I may as well post about them. 3 state legislative specials, one in Dec. 2018 and two in 2019. I put in candidates where I am aware of any.

Virginia State House District 24 (Dec 18, 2018)

Candidates: Ronnie Campbell (R) vs. Christian Worth (D)
Location: All of Rockbridge/Bath counties, most of Amherst County, SW Augusta County, independent cities of Lexington/Buena Vista

2017 Governor: 65-34 Gillespie
2016 POTUS: 66-30 Trump

Virginia State Senate District 33 (Jan 8, 2019/incumbent Jennifer Wexton resigned after election to Congress)

Candidates: Jennifer Boysko (D) vs. Joe May (R)
Location: NoVa, 73% Loudoun County/26% Fairfax County (Sterling/Herndon/Reston/Leesburg/etc)

2017 Governor: 67-32 Northam
2016 POTUS: 62-32 Clinton

South Carolina State Senate District 6 (March 26, 2019/incumbent William Timmons resigned after election to Congress)
Candidates: TBD (Primary Jan 22/Runoff Primary Feb 5)
Location: Greenville and suburbs
2016 POTUS: 61.8-31.4 Trump
2012 POTUS: 67.4-30.6 Romney

VA HD-24 is Safe R, VA SD-33 is Safe D, SC SD-06 is Safe R.

[ON Progressive]

Schedule for the rest of the year:

November 27 - Mississippi Runoffs (House 31 & 85)
December 4 - GA HD 28 (R v. R) and SOS
December 8 - LA HD 90 (R v. R) and SOS
December 11 - TX SD 6
December 18 - VA HD 24

The MS house races tomorrow should be Safe D. District 31 is 73% black, and District 85 is 67% black.

[ON Progressive]

Mississippi Results from last night:

State House District 31
Show or hide race▾
Candidate   Party   Votes   Percentage
★   Oist Anthony   NP   4,920   70%
Barbara Brooks   NP   2,143   30%
Total   7,063
100% Reporting 18 of 18 Precincts

State House District 85
Show or hide race▾
Candidate   Party   Votes   Percentage
★   Jeffery Harness   NP   4,300   59%
JoAnn Collins-Smith   NP   2,929   41%
Total   7,229
100% Reporting 27 of 27 Precincts

Were the winners the de facto Democratic candidates?

As I said earlier, these are supermajority black seats, so yes.

[ON Progressive]

Since nobody posted about these, I may as well post about them. 3 state legislative specials, one in Dec. 2018 and two in 2019. I put in candidates where I am aware of any.

Virginia State House District 24 (Dec 18, 2018)

Candidates: Ronnie Campbell (R) vs. Christian Worth (D)
Location: All of Rockbridge/Bath counties, most of Amherst County, SW Augusta County, independent cities of Lexington/Buena Vista

2017 Governor: 65-34 Gillespie
2016 POTUS: 66-30 Trump

Virginia State Senate District 33 (Jan 8, 2019/incumbent Jennifer Wexton resigned after election to Congress)

Candidates: Jennifer Boysko (D) vs. Joe May (R)
Location: NoVa, 73% Loudoun County/26% Fairfax County (Sterling/Herndon/Reston/Leesburg/etc)

2017 Governor: 67-32 Northam
2016 POTUS: 62-32 Clinton

South Carolina State Senate District 6 (March 26, 2019/incumbent William Timmons resigned after election to Congress)
Candidates: TBD (Primary Jan 22/Runoff Primary Feb 5)
Location: Greenville and suburbs
2016 POTUS: 61.8-31.4 Trump
2012 POTUS: 67.4-30.6 Romney

VA HD-24 is Safe R, VA SD-33 is Safe D, SC SD-06 is Safe R.

Although the Virginia seat appears to be solidly Republican, wouldn't a theoretical Democratic win their flip the house?

It would make the House 50-50, although I don't think it would hold in 2019 so if Dems get the House majority, it's highly unlikely this seat is a part of it.

[ON Progressive]

I did some US Senate calculations for a couple of the state legislative seats coming up for special elections, and they confirm Safe R in both.

VA HD-24:
Corey Stewart (R) 62.9%
Tim Kaine (D) 35.4%

TN SD-32:
Marsha Blackburn (R) 64.7%
Phil Bredesen (D) 35.3%

[ON Progressive]

47/47 in

Ronnie Campbell (R) 59.26%
Christian Worth (D) 40.14%

Considering this is a Stewart 63-35/Gillespie 65-34/Trump 66-30 seat, it's not unsurprising it stayed Republican by a solid margin.

[ON Progressive]

https://www.valdostadailytimes.com/news/local_news/house-election-slated-for-feb/article_7f4b18ad-ba6e-5f97-9964-11411602d8da.html

Special election will happen in February in GA HD-176. Don't expect much here. It's a 68-29 Trump district, and Kemp probably did even better here considering every county that is at least partially inside the district swung to Kemp.

[ON Progressive]

Tim Kaine won Virginia's 33rd Senate District by a 41.1% margin. Tonight, Boysko won it by 39.7%.

Keep in mind, Boysko was going up against a relatively moderate former State House member who had pretty good name ID. Kaine was going up against a neo-Confederate.

Yet another example of "ideology means next to nothing in elections"

[ON Progressive]

Is that a flip?

No. Both of the Texas seats up last night are seats that are very safely Democratic.

[ON Progressive]

Trump won this by 13 points but it’s pretty much solidly Democratic downballot, right? I’ll guess D+9.

It's Trump +11, but Smith/Walz carried it too. Wardlow and Stauber did carry it with 49% pluralities otoh.

[ON Progressive]

Damn. It wasn't even close. And that's before tonight's centrist SOTU speech. Trump landslide 2020?

Damn. It wasn't even close. And that's before tonight's centrist SOTU speech. Trump landslide 2020?

This is likely. His approval is following Reagan's and will soon jump up into the high 50s.

How can you guys have such terrible takes? This is the kind of district where you'd expect a bad result given that it's a rapidly Republican trending part of Minnesota. Democrats don't even need to win this seat to win statewide, Ellison lost here by 5 and still won statewide.

[ON Progressive]

Damn. It wasn't even close. And that's before tonight's centrist SOTU speech. Trump landslide 2020?

Damn. It wasn't even close. And that's before tonight's centrist SOTU speech. Trump landslide 2020?

This is likely. His approval is following Reagan's and will soon jump up into the high 50s.

How can you guys have such terrible takes? This is the kind of district where you'd expect a bad result given that it's a rapidly Republican trending part of Minnesota. Democrats don't even need to win this seat to win statewide, Ellison lost here by 5 and still won statewide.

I mean id expect a bad result in the GE. But all the statewide D's still won it in 2018 besides Ellison and this is a special election which means Ds should be more energized to vote. This doesn't signify the end of special election turnout for D's but it is in no way a good result

Incorrect. Steve Simon and Julie Blaha couldn't win this seat either. Those were both non-controversial and won by more statewide than Ellison.

[ON Progressive]

Here's some context for you deniers - a Republican has 37% in the Texas seat. Trump got 33% there in 2016, and Cruz probably got like 28%.

Only one takeaway from these special elections: Republicans surging.

A 72% Hispanic seat having awful turnout helping Republicans is not anything new, or surprising.

[ON Progressive]

Someone on reddit who lives in GA HD-176 (he's a Democrat, for the record) had this to say about the race that would explain a lot:
"From my point of view this was always a two man race between Patten and Burchett with the majority of people not even knowing that the two Democrats ran. Patten is a Democrat turned moderate Republican (if there's even such a thing anymore) and Burchett is a Trump cultist. The race was framed as the Republican Burchett vs the Democrat Patten so I suspect an inconveniently large number of Democratic votes went to Patten"

[ON Progressive]

A competitive special election will happen in the Iowa State Senate.

Jeff Danielson (D) has resigned over the scandal of an abusive work environment at a local fire station, opening up a special election in a seat Hillary carried 48-45 and Hubbell carried 53-45.

https://iowastartingline.com/2019/02/14/jeff-danielson-resigns-from-iowa-senate-opens-up-swing-district/

[ON Progressive]

A competitive special election will happen in the Iowa State Senate.

Jeff Danielson (D) has resigned over the scandal of an abusive work environment at a local fire station, opening up a special election in a seat Hillary carried 48-45 and Hubbell carried 53-45.

https://iowastartingline.com/2019/02/14/jeff-danielson-resigns-from-iowa-senate-opens-up-swing-district/

We should be able to hold this, right?

Oh yeah, we should have no trouble holding a seat that's 10+ points more Democratic than the state.

[ON Progressive]

Yeah the Dems down on Northam, but still easily winning this thing. Not hard to see why, what with the personal and statewide scandals.

I think it's more personal than anything. The statewide scandal news died out a week ago.

[ON Progressive]

Samirah only did ~4% worse than Hillary vote share wise in the seat. Hardly anything to worry about, given the candidate was quite bad.

[ON Progressive]

4th blue to red flip this year. Panic time?

An 80% Trump seat not holding for Democrats is not panic time.

[ON Progressive]

https://twitter.com/VVertuccio/status/1103084432511111169

For a second I read that as 72% R and was like "NO".

I told ya that Elliott can be won back with some good' ol fashioned #Populism

Just drop the identity politics, and grow a flat top haircut, and Appalachia will be yours.

Obama won Elliot twice despite getting obliterated in Appalachia

It was one county out of hundreds and it still swung 20 points from 04.

It held in 2012 too, I dont think a Dem is gonna win it in 2020 but its not impossible

It is impossible.