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

[ProgressiveModerate]

The Jackson result looks weird. A 61% Hagedorn County going 61% Ettinger?!?

Is it fully reported? Ettinger was leading in one of the 60-40 counties earlier.

it's apparently over 95% reported and the amount of total votes in makes sense. my guess is they flipped the numbers as someone else said earlier.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Even if it ends up not being indicative of the national result come Nov 2022, this is still a bad sign for the state GOP. In order to win statewide in MN at this point they really need to put up a solid performance in MN-01 but it seems like even as Dems have collapsed in the rural parts they've found newfound strength in some of these smaller counties, mainly Rochester, Rochester, and Winoa.

The way I like to think about statewide races in MN is that in order for the GOP to win, MN-01, MN-06, MN-07, and MN-08 all have to collectively outvote the 4 MSP seats. If Dems are still able to remain competitive in MN-01, that makes the GOP's task quite difficult to outvote the other 4, especially since MN-04 nad MN-05 are VERY Democratic districts and basically all of MN-06, 7, and 8 has to go to cancelling out those 2 in a normal election or even GOP friendly election. And while the GOP may be able to narrowly win in MN-02, it won't net them many votes, and MN-03 is basically gone for them.

(this basic logic applies on both the new and old lines)

[ProgressiveModerate]

All of Blue Earth primary vote is in, D 55 - R 45. 1,000 votes.

I'm certain there are more than 1000 votes to come out of Blue Earth

[ProgressiveModerate]

Hot take: With GOP's underperformance even compared to 2020 in suburbs, is NC a more likely Senate flip than WI?

Possibly. I think the thing that holds it back though is Budd seems to have a lot less potential dirt than Johnson, but then again, Johnson was able to greatly outperform expectations in 2016 winning a race that many saw as a default flip.

Another big difference too is that in WI, most of the rurals are light red whereas in NC, you have a lot of ruby red rural communities. If there's an increase in polarization or increased turnout in these rural communities, sorta like what we saw in VA-Gov 2021, it'd be very hard for Dems to overcome.

[ProgressiveModerate]

All of Blue Earth primary vote is in, D 55 - R 45. 1,000 votes.

I'm certain there are more than 1000 votes to come out of Blue Earth

D net votes

Oh yeah that's pretty solid

[ProgressiveModerate]

Hot take: With GOP's underperformance even compared to 2020 in suburbs, is NC a more likely Senate flip than WI?

Possibly. I think the thing that holds it back though is Budd seems to have a lot less potential dirt than Johnson, but then again, Johnson was able to greatly outperform expectations in 2016 winning a race that many saw as a default flip.

Another big difference too is that in WI, most of the rurals are light red whereas in NC, you have a lot of ruby red rural communities. If there's an increase in polarization or increased turnout in these rural communities, sorta like what we saw in VA-Gov 2021, it'd be very hard for Dems to overcome.

Beasley is a better candidate than Barnes though, Barnes could become the latest casualty of the Elizabeth Warren wing.

To me they both seem pretty milk-toast though that just may be me.

[ProgressiveModerate]

So is there a decent chance of sub 5 point margin here?

Outside chance of an Ettinger win. More likely he falls a couple percent short. If the College students were back in Mankato and Winona he might have done it.

I think it's very unlikely he'd be able to net 7k+ votes out of Olmsted.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Hot take: With GOP's underperformance even compared to 2020 in suburbs, is NC a more likely Senate flip than WI?

Possibly. I think the thing that holds it back though is Budd seems to have a lot less potential dirt than Johnson, but then again, Johnson was able to greatly outperform expectations in 2016 winning a race that many saw as a default flip.

Another big difference too is that in WI, most of the rurals are light red whereas in NC, you have a lot of ruby red rural communities. If there's an increase in polarization or increased turnout in these rural communities, sorta like what we saw in VA-Gov 2021, it'd be very hard for Dems to overcome.

Beasley is a better candidate than Barnes though, Barnes could become the latest casualty of the Elizabeth Warren wing.

To me they both seem pretty milk-toast though that just may be me.

They're both B-tier candidates. Solid, if not generational talents.

At least we don't have Cumming-ham. He was a disappointing recruit from the start and in hindsight it's too hard to say if he would've won or not without the Scandal. Yes, perhaps that attributed to some of his underperformance in urban/suburban areas but some of that was also downballot lag.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I recall having been reliably informed by the good blue avatars of this wonderful forum that the NE-01 underperformance was solely due to Fortenberry's scandal carrying over to the next special election somehow. I wonder what the excuse will be this time. Perhaps this time, too, voters confused Finstad with the old representative and thought he was dead.

It’ll be that this district voted for Obama and this is just downballot lag even though by detailed county and precinct results if anything this shows an acceleration of polarization within the district.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I wonder how the NY-19 special will go. If Rs win it it’d be a pretty stark change in dynamics but special elections can be strange. I rate it as a slight tilt D and tonight’s result only reinforce that.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Conservative election Twitter is in full cope mode over the MN-01 results. You love to see it.

FWIW I actually don't think this is a great result for Democrats, not bad, expected, but not great. MN-01 was never as red as the Trump numbers would indicate, last nights election is Republicans largest congressional  margin of victory there since 2004.

I would agree with you if the race was kept close by Dems doing well with rural Dems on borrowed time anyways. I think the difference though is that Dems actually got better margins than Biden out of places like Winoa, Rochester, and Mantako even as Finstad only slightly underperformed Trump in rurals. This suggests liberal turnout was relatively decent and that dems may still have an opening in the district even as the rurals realign.

[ProgressiveModerate]

And this is the cope on the R side. It would be the same as saying Dems winning the old GA-07 by 5 in a special election is a good result for them.

[ProgressiveModerate]

And this is the cope on the R side. It would be the same as saying Dems winning the old GA-07 by 5 in a special election is a good result for them.

I mean, the 2017 Handel-Ossoff GA-6 special election did swing to the right from the baseline of 2016-PRES.

Ye that’s fair. It shows how sometimes specials can be misleading due to dynamics specific to that race. Who knew that Dems would have solid victories in the district come 2018 and 2020 plus Osoff would be a Senator

[ProgressiveModerate]

Can someone explain to me why Molinaro is a particularly strong candidate? Like I get he's relatively young, attractive, and has kids but he's not a big name in the district, not particularly moderate, nor notably charismatic.

I honestly feel like in many cases on this forum, people rank candidate quality on these lower profile races based upon age, looks, and race rather than the actual candidate and their positions. Obviously these factors can still matter but there's a big hole missing in that analysis.

[ProgressiveModerate]

To be fair to Molinaro, in addition to winning his 2019 county executive race by ~17 points, he did win NY-19 by 11 in 2018. Not too shabby at all. However, I think this was mostly down to Cuomo's being a weirdo in that election, honestly. As evidence for this, (old) NY-20 went from Cuomo+0.3 to Biden+19, a much larger shift, even though it has none of Dutchess in it.

You also need to keep in mind that all of Dutchess is not in NY-19, and the county with the most votes (by quite a lot, actually, it logged 95k votes in 2020 to Dutchess's 60k) in the NY-19 race is therefore Ulster County, which Pat Ryan is executive of. He, too, overperformed by a lot in his county executive race, winning by like 48 points in 2019. Now, obviously that won't be the case in this special, but by the same token Molinaro won't overperform by as much, either.

Because I'm a pessimist, I'll say that Molinaro will overperform generic R by a point or two, but if you're strictly looking at the data I think it's basically a wash. Both candidates seem popular in their home bases. Molinaro might have some infrastructure from 2018, but Ryan's home base comprises more of the district. As such, especially since Democrats have been doing so well in specials recently, I would say Democrats have a very real shot of winning this special election.

Molinaro's strong performance upstate was more just Cuomo being weak and particularly toxic for the Albany area.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I'm still keeping this at tossup/tilt Molinaro.

Firstly, it'd be quite a change if Dems streak of putting up solid performances in special elections (in demographically similar seats) suddenly just stops. Also, everyone keeps talking about how strong of a candidate Molinaro is, he's def not a garbage dump, but neither were Flood or Finstad. He just seems like a pretty generic R and nothing seems particuarly bad about Ryan.

Finally, this seat went to Biden in 2020 and has a good chunk of what many might consider to be the "Dem machine" or just very reliable liberal voters.

The one thing I think potentially works for Molinaro is that upstate NY tends to be a bit "overreactive" to national shifts so even a small shift in Rs favour nationally could make things very tricky for Ryan.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I'm still keeping this at tossup/tilt Molinaro.

Firstly, it'd be quite a change if Dems streak of putting up solid performances in special elections (in demographically similar seats) suddenly just stops. Also, everyone keeps talking about how strong of a candidate Molinaro is, he's def not a garbage dump, but neither were Flood or Finstad. He just seems like a pretty generic R and nothing seems particuarly bad about Ryan.

Finally, this seat went to Biden in 2020 and has a good chunk of what many might consider to be the "Dem machine" or just very reliable liberal voters.

The one thing I think potentially works for Molinaro is that upstate NY tends to be a bit "overreactive" to national shifts so even a small shift in Rs favour nationally could make things very tricky for Ryan.

Both Ryan and Molinaro are solid candidates. Ryan's only problem (not sure it will matter much), is that Ryan is running in a different CD for next year, while Molinaro is running in the same one. So this race is effectively about whether or not Molinaro in the General will be running as an incumbent or not, which could indeed be a critical factor since the new NY-19 is a bit more Dem than the old one because Cervas rejected my advice to keep Tompkins out of the CD.  

It will be interesting to see if Molinaro is the incumbent how much he uses the couple of months to separate himself from Trump. Trump is really, really toxic in the more prosperous parts of the CD. The higher the SES of a precinct, the higher the Dem percentage, outside of a few precincts that have a lot of people of color, like the one I am sitting in.

There is no Dem machine. It is more about upscale reliable white Dem voters, many of whom vote from their second homes, which drives the local Pubs nuts.

I think this part of NY has a bit of spillover culturally from places like MA; you have quite a lot of smaller Dem towns that have been quite reliable even as rural areas have re-aligned. You also have a few areas that are tourism heavy, most notably Ulster County which also fits the definition of high SES precinct.

[ProgressiveModerate]

DDHQ %s in for the NY specials counties seem off. I'd be wary.

Yeah, NYT is being a bit wonky as well but from what I can tell turnout is low everywhere. The hotly contested Dem primaries are both at 62K and 77K and seem to be close to done counting.

In NY-10, they said it was done counting when there was 47k ballots in. Now we're up to 63k and still going.

[ProgressiveModerate]

A bit ironic cause this was the opposite of 2020 where the ED vote was counted first in NY and there was a red mirage.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Going with a narrow Molinaro win.

https://twitter.com/NapervillePol/status/1562261845863448576?s=20&t=fLr-G2qY...

According to NYT 56% is in and he's up 26%

[ProgressiveModerate]

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?

Biden + 4.5. Molinaro has to overperform in Duthchess to win disitrict-wide though given it's him home turf

This will be close.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Delgado lost Greene by 14% in 2018 while winning 5% districtwide

Molinaro up 22, so that would signal 3% win districtwide if uniform.

In NY-23 Ithaca had a massive swing left from 2020. Even if Molinaro wins this, he might have a lot of problems in November’s NY-19.

Yea, Pia's 85-15 performance in is insane in that county

Seems to be a theme of liberal college towns really pulling through for Dems in these special elections.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Montgomery seems to be close to done? Molinaro +32

R+26 in 2018
R+13 in 2020

It’s only a part of Montgomery.

Small part voted Trump + 35 in 2020 but was only 6k votes, meaning there def is room for fluctuations.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Is Columbia truly done? Bc if so Ryan+26 seems *insanely* good for Ryan, right?

Though 7k votes would be extremely low turnout which wouldn't neccessarily be good. There's def more to come out of it.

The remaining votes tends to be very unreliable in NY so everyone take these % with a grain of salt. NYT said NY-10 was 95% in at 47k and it seems like the final total will be closer to 70k

[ProgressiveModerate]

Caveats, but NYT is at about 80% finished with 89K of the vote.

That would put us at about ~112,000 votes, which would line up rather close to the 1/3 of 2020 turnout we're seeing overall

I would think in this district because of the special election as well as being higher propensity, it'd prolly be slightly higher than the state overall.