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

[Mr.Phips]

There could be snowball’s chance that democrats pick this up, or atleast come close a la SC-05

Democrats are not picking up a seat that is 60% rural. This seat is like VA-05 - relatively “close” but not at all winnable for Dems.

This seat is worse than VA-05 for Dems since it doesn’t have a Charlottesville or Albermarle county.  The part of Franklin county in the district is not particularly Democratic and Athens is not nearly as big or Democratic as Charlottesville.

[Mr.Phips]

https://twitter.com/ryanobles/status/1602339822256914432

Glad to see Youngkin didn't play games with this.

Credit to Youngkin, I assumed he would drag this out.

He will not.

He is a genuinely good person/governor. I just hope he stays Virginia focused and not run for president.

I also do not think the 2023 elections will go well for his party either. Though not disastrous.

Oh god I'd totally forgotten there were 2023 elections.  It never ends. 

My early estimates are

HOD: 51 D to 49 R

Senate: 22 D 18 R

The Senate could be a tad worse for the GOP and the House could be a power sharing agreement.

I went through race by race.

That’s actually about where I am with my predictions (I have HOD at 52D-48R).  I assume you also have Dems picking up SD-07 in January?

[Mr.Phips]

Dems prolly would've won the VA state House on the new maps. Rmbr in 2021 the old maps were used which were a previous R gerrymander and rmbr too population shifts almost exclusively favored Ds in VA.

In the State Sen, the path is very clear. Dems need 21 seats for a majority, and there are 20 seats that are over Biden + 17 (and all went McAuliffe) and should be pretty safe. From there they need one of the Biden + 13 Loudon seat that narrowly went Youngkin, the Biden + 9 northern Newport News seat (also Youngkin), or the 42% black Biden + 7 rural seat (that went to Youngkin), or a possible suprise somewhere else. Rs basically have to sweep the table to win the State Sen.

The State House is far more complex given the insane number of seats (100). Tbh, there aren't many competative outer-Nova seats as many here seem to imply; the dropoff between NOVA and rurals is pretty sharp. According to DRA, McAuliffe won 48 seats, most of which seem pretty secure, so again, it seems like a case where Rs have to run the table to win.

Giving Dems every HOD seat that was Biden + 11 or better gets them 52 seats.  Doing that in the state senate gets them 21.  If you give them the Biden + 8 SD-24 in the Newport News area where Monty Mason is almost certainly running for re-election, they have 22 there.