State Legislature Special Election Megathread v2

[Adam Griffin]

Tague ahead by 600 based on current results (including Schoharie numbers).

[Adam Griffin]

Vote Dump: 142nd district. R is up 100 votes.

This would be a HOLD for the GOP though, since the current holder won as a Republican.

The "Republican" is actually a Democrat who will caucus with the Democrats. Mainly, this was a D vs D race ("progressive" versus "labor", if you will). You can thank the dumb fusion system for this confusion.

[Adam Griffin]

I didn't really follow politics closely back then, but were republicans successful at flipping state legislature seats before 2010 midterms?

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[Adam Griffin]

Columbia County has started to report in 107:

Doran - 719
Ashby - 354

https://sites.google.com/a/columbiacountyny.com/elections/election_information/election-results/election-night-results

And Washington as well:

Doran - 198
Ashby - 110

https://www.washingtoncountyny.gov/802/Current-Elections-Results

[Adam Griffin]

In 107 thus far (totals for all 3 counties; 25% reporting):

Doran: 2016 (60.76%)
Ashby: 1293 (38.97%)
Other: 9 (0.27%)

[Adam Griffin]

In 107 thus far (totals for all 3 counties; 31% reporting):

Doran: 2428 (56.96%)
Ashby: 1824 (42.79%)
Other: 11 (0.25%)

[Adam Griffin]

I remarked some weeks ago on AAD about how hilarious 48 & 178 looked side-by-side:

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It makes a lot of sense that they'd actually both flip in this climate. A New Pennsylvania!

[Adam Griffin]

https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/998979798952284160

RANDOM PRECINCT REPORT FROM MY [WHITFIELD] COUNTY

2014: 550 R, 67 D (89-11)
2018 (as of 4 PM): 249 R, 70 D (78-22)

Dem turnout at 104% of 2014; GOP at 45% of 2014.

[Adam Griffin]

As has already been alluded to by multiple posters, this wasn't particularly surprising. Areas where minorities - and in particular, low-propensity blocs such as young people, Latinos and Asians - disproportionately underperform in special elections. This is just like when the Republicans won a State Senate seat in GA by 2 points in 2015 that voted for Obama both times by 50 points. The GOP incumbent lost by 51 points in 2016.

I don't know the specifics of this district (yet), but if it's the slightest amount majority-Democratic in normal elections, it'll likely flip back in November.

Type	State	Dist	Date	Runoff	'16 Mar	'16 P Mar	Special Mar	Swing (Avg)
Senate	TX	19	9/18/18		D+15	D+12	R+6	R+20

[Adam Griffin]

As has already been alluded to by multiple posters, this wasn't particularly surprising. Areas where minorities - and in particular, low-propensity blocs such as young people, Latinos and Asians - disproportionately underperform in special elections. This is just like when the Republicans won a State Senate seat in GA by 2 points in 2015 that voted for Obama both times by 50 points. The GOP incumbent lost by 51 points in 2016.

I don't know the specifics of this district (yet), but if it's the slightest amount majority-Democratic in normal elections, it'll likely flip back in November.

Type	State	Dist	Date	Runoff	'16 Mar	'16 P Mar	Special Mar	Swing (Avg)
Senate	TX	19	9/18/18		D+15	D+12	R+6	R+20

IIUC - Flores is now state Senator until November 2020.

Oh, that sounds right: I forgot they have four-year terms.

[Adam Griffin]

Late to the party, but as somebody who tracked all state legislative special elections throughout the 2017-18 cycle, bad performances in rural GA and TX specifically are not surprising nor out of the norm.

I've written about this numerous times even before the 2018 election, but with the case of GA specifically, Democrats underperformed in just about every area of the state save those with very large white populations (and next to no black population), because - surprise, surprise - the special election surges for Democrats that we saw throughout the first 2 years of Trump's presidency were built almost exclusively on the backs of old white voters showing up (why do you think the biggest gains were in the Midwest?), and in the South, the larger the black population, the more immovable the white population tends to be politically. Furthermore, in GA (and to a degree, throughout the South), the black populations tend to be much younger than the white populations - and who is likely to vote in special elections?

It's also worth noting that the more of a clusterf[inks]k a race is, the better GOP candidates tend to do. My area had both a special State House and State Senate election in 2017. Ultimately in 2018, Abrams did better in my district (HD-4) than Carter did - yet in the 2017 HD special, the Democrat got half the normal vote share (Abrams was in the low 30s, and the HD Dem was ~15%); a large & young minority (Latino) population coupled with the fact that it was a 4-way race (3 R, 1 D) tends to lead to more voters in the minority voting for their "preferred" GOP candidate making it to a likely runoff.

Additionally, in the overlapping, substantially whiter State Senate special (SD 54) several months earlier, the Democratic candidate improved on Clinton's margin by more than 25 points in the runoff (65-35 as opposed to 78-20).

These kinds of dynamics don't lead to better performances for Democrats in special elections in the rural South - and GA was one of only two states where the average state legislative special margin was worse than the 2016 presidential margin:

* Incomplete results; do not have data for Clinton margins in all special elections