Who wins the PA Supreme Court race in 2023?

[Mr.Phips]

The democrats because there is the philadelphia Mayoral race

Yes.  Have Democrats ever lost a Supreme Court race (excluding retention elections) in PA in a year that coincided with the Philly Mayoral race? 

[Mr.Phips]

Carluccio is a "good" candidate (comes from quite left-wing suburban areas, beat Trumpy types in the primary surprisingly comfortably) and PA Democrats have kind of a bad record at these, most recently in 2021. I'll say Carluccio, but I don't think we've had one of these post-Dobbs and my feel for what the environment is is not very good. In MI/WI, Democrats running for the Supreme Court have run double-digits ahead of Democrats running for other positions.

Brobson won by the skin of his teeth on Democrats’ worst electoral night nationally since Trump was elected, thanks to strong overperformances in the Philly collar counties. He won Bucks, lost Chester by single digits, nearly hit 40 in Montgomery, and even came within 11 points of winning Delaware. If Carluccio does even slightly worse than Brobson here, she’s done.

In 2017 -- so approximately at the least popular moment of Trump's Presidency -- a candidate with a background much like Carluccio's came within a point of winning Chester and Delaware (and the environment in 2017 was definitely worse for the GOP than it is now). And no, she was not an incumbent. A lot of the PA down-ballot stuff is just realigning incredibly slowly, and the state party generally has a lot of problems.

The real question mark, though, is that all of this stuff was pre-Dobbs.

(Note that the 2017 race was only a 4-point Republican victory, and Brobson won by only 1 point -- because in addition to this stuff there's still lots of leftover rural Democratic support that's been long gone in races that aren't judicial.)

Had there been a mayoral race in Philly and the associated higher turnout there, Dems almost certainly would have won that race.