Who wins the PA Supreme Court race in 2023?

[Vosem]

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.

[Vosem]

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.)

[Vosem]

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.)

Mundy actually was an appointed incumbent in that race. And 2017 was a less polarized era than 2021 was and 2023 will be. Otherwise Brobson would have won by more than Mundy did because of the national environment.

Also the PA Democrats aren’t the party that’s in trouble in the state, otherwise we’d have Senator Oz and Governor Mastriano.

Kind of fair, but in general Democrats are much more reliant on organized efforts to keep up turnout than Republicans are, and so they seem more vulnerable to 'the state party here is very bad'. These organizations can sometimes be built in a short period of time (consider GA 2016/2018/2020), but they can also pretty quickly collapse if neglected (consider NV between 2012 and 2014, or FL over the past few cycles).

The democrats because there is the philadelphia Mayoral race

I second this. When Philadelphia has its municipal elections Democrats tend to do well in judicial elections.

Yeah, this is a fair point.

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.)

So looking at some of these outright atrocious SEPA margins, how exactly do Democrats avoid getting destroyed by 10 pts statewide? Is there a massive crash in rural turnout to offset their disastrous Southeast margins?

Yeah, a big part of the answer is that turnout in these is very disproportionately SEPA and suburban (which is part of how Republicans can get away with being fairly "moderate" and not losing a lot elsewhere). Obviously in a presidential/gubernatorial/Senatorial election Pennsylvania at R+4 and DelCo at D+1 would not coincide.