State Legislature Special Election Megathread v3

[Mr.Phips]

There could be a special election upcoming in AL HD-10, following David Cole's indictment for voter fraud.

Cole only won here 51.6-45 last year, so this could be a possible Democratic gain, either in a special election or in 2024 when the seat is normally up.

Also only went 50%-48% for Trump in 2020.

[Kevinstat]

Bath Rep. Sean Paulhus resigns to take register of probate appointment

The special election hasn't been called yet (the Maine Constitution requires an "immediate election" to fill State Senate vacancies but merely says that State House vacancies "may be filled by a new election", and Maine statute requires municipal officers (Board of Selectmen, City Council, etc.) in an affected municipality (so, the Bath City Council in this case, since the district is simply the City of Bath) to notify the Governor of the need to fill the vacancy), but will almost certainly be held on November 7.

Pretty safe D seat nowadays.  The guy who resigned himself won a special election in 2019, 975 votes (66.5%) to 491 (33.5%).  (Maine State Representatives only represent 9,022 people on average based on 2020 census figures, and when you couple that with an irregular election (I'm not sure if there was anything on the Bath municipal ballot) you can get low figures like these.)

Special election set to fill House District 50 seat

Committee nominating paperwork (for party candidates) / nominating petitions with at least 50 valid signatures (for non-party candidates) due: 5:00 p.m. on Friday, September 1, 2023

Write-in candidate declaration deadline: 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 6, 2023 (I've never seen a write-in candidate declare for a special election in the period when there have been such deadlines; until 2007 the deadline for a write-in candidate to declare was either non-existent (pre-1999) or was 3 days after the election; when you're only dealing with 1/151 of the state (population-wise as of the last census and so, very roughly, voter-wise), your chances of getting an eccentric individual to declare as a write-in diminish).

Election date: Tuesday, November 7, 2023

Democrat running unopposed in Bath special election for Maine House seat

The deadline for write-in candidates to declare for the seat (so votes cast for them will be counted in the official results and not treated as blanks) was last Wednesday.  I don't know if anyone declared by the deadline.  It usually doesn't happen in State House special elections in Maine (only ~1/151 of the  potential vanity candidates in the state would live in the district), but in a situation where there's only one candidate on the ballot, it might be more likely.  Still, being the only candidate on the ballot would be a huge advantage, and it's a pretty safe Democratic seat nowadays anyway (which is perhaps why the Republicans didn't bother to field a candidate; maybe they feel this way they can keep some "momentum" from their pickup win in the Maine House District 45 special election in June).

[Oryxslayer]

https://twitter.com/Uncrewed/status/1698041348518244390?t=MH4nSz9NjQ66cSBYdD2IDQ...

This is tonight.  Could easily provide potential fuel for the NY doomers or the NY realists depending on the outcome.  The district itself is kinda a gerrymandered fusion of White Republican, orthodox jew, white liberal,  Chinese, and Hispanic neighborhoods. Also reminder NY is better than in 2020 and modernized their counting laws before 2022, so we will know the winner tonight in all but the tightest results.

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1701768490057691387

I'm not going to read anything into a special with less than 5K total votes but at least the doomers will be quite for another week.

[Progressive Pessimist]

https://twitter.com/DrewSav/status/1701768490057691387

I'm not going to read anything into a special with less than 5K total votes but at least the doomers will be quite for another week.

I'll take it.

[Oryxslayer]

Matching Biden, which is what'll probably happen when the 1% of remaining late mail show up, is more than what Dems would want in a political climate that on paper should favor the GOP. In practice though, everything so far has been Dem improvements, which has raised the standards.

[Naperville Politics Guy]

Man, we really about to will single digits NY06 into existence

[ProgressiveModerate]

It appears what happened in AD-27 is the Dem did massively better than Biden/Hochul with the Orthodox Jews, but did really really bad in the whiter Whitestone/College Point suburbs. Def a significant regional/neighborhood divide going on under the hood here.

In some way, the precincts result spell bad news for NY-Dems because of how bad they did in suburban Whitestone and College Point (literally 30+ points worse than Biden). The only reason the topline margin was good was because this Dem had unique appeal and outright won the Orthodox communities around Queens College whereas the Republican gains elsewhere seem more engrained.

[Vosem]

https://twitter.com/BruneElections/status/1701775747650584762

Horrific performance with the non-Orthodox vote, but still a comfortable Democratic victory on the whole on the strength of uniform Orthodox voting. Probably net bad news for NYC Dems, but I don't think it really means anything outside of NYC.

EDIT: Underrated Hochul Administration accomplishment -- apparently New York actually counts votes quickly now?!

[kwabbit]

This probably would’ve gone R if not for the Orthodox flipping. Did the GOP still hope to flip it despite Berger securing the Orthodox vote? There were huge swings in the North and that wasn’t enough to make it close.

Is there any chance the Orthodox will endorse Biden over Trump? I keep on thinking that the GOP has finally broken the loyalty of the Orthodox to Democrats but down ballot it still seems to go Dem most of the time.

[ProgressiveModerate]

https://twitter.com/BruneElections/status/1701775747650584762

Horrific performance with the non-Orthodox vote, but still a comfortable Democratic victory on the whole on the strength of uniform Orthodox voting. Probably net bad news for NYC Dems, but I don't think it really means anything outside of NYC.

EDIT: Underrated Hochul Administration accomplishment -- apparently New York actually counts votes quickly now?!

Ye in 2022 the votes were counted p fast as well. NY Dems passed an elections bill which actually fixed the slow vote counting.

Also ye, most of these extreme hard right shifts are due to local political reasons, but I could see them slowly bleed over to the federal level. Unlikely Biden does as bad as Hochul in many of these NYC communities, but could def lose ground from 2020.

[warandwar]

Horrific performance with the non-Orthodox vote, but still a comfortable Democratic victory on the whole on the strength of uniform Orthodox voting. Probably net bad news for NYC Dems, but I don't think it really means anything outside of NYC.

EDIT: Underrated Hochul Administration accomplishment -- apparently New York actually counts votes quickly now?!

There was not "uniform" orthodox voting here - that's pretty clear from the map. Communal support was split although the Democrat got the majority. This area of Queens is more modox than hasidish, as well.  Pomonok (also in the south) isn't orthodox, it is basically one big public housing project as well as a bunch of apartments built for union electricians and their families (a coworker lives there). Whitestone and thereabouts have been trending hard right for years now - that's the area represented by Paladino in the City Council. All told, I don't think it really says anything new, other than the "migrant!" line isn't any more effective than the "crime!" line. 

[wbrocks67]

Seems like Berger will basically match Biden with final mail-ins, so I'd call this a win. Incredibly low turnout, but Dems will obviously like to see that this was nowhere near Hochul or even Schumer levels.

[ajc0918]

Turnout in this election was like 4% or something. Don't extrapolate.

[Skill and Chance]

We finally got a special election in a diverse urbanized district with a lot of people who are neither white nor black.  This result in NYC seems broadly consistent with R's outright winning the Hispanic and Asian vote in 2024? 


The question I have here is by how much would the R have won by if the Orthodox Jewish community had voted as R as they did in 2020?  Or as R as they did in 2022?  And how would that compare with the actual Biden/Trump or Hochul/Zeldin results?  That should probably be the benchmark unless we for some reason anticipate the leaders of this community would endorse Biden or congressional Dems in 2024.

[jamestroll]

The evidence is piling up that Illinois and Colorado will vote to the left of New York in 2024. With the caveat about special election quirkiness.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

We finally got a special election in a diverse urbanized district with a lot of people who are neither white nor black.  This result in NYC seems broadly consistent with R's outright winning the Hispanic and Asian vote in 2024? 

Not with single digits turnout, and also mostly driven by NYC issues and patterns that don't matter outside of NYC.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Seems like Berger will basically match Biden with final mail-ins, so I'd call this a win. Incredibly low turnout, but Dems will obviously like to see that this was nowhere near Hochul or even Schumer levels.

That's all I really wanted to see out of this special election. I don't know what it truly says about New York swinging and trending right or not, but the 2022 results probably won't be the norm going forward, even if there is still a rightward swing.

[Duke of York]

Seems like Berger will basically match Biden with final mail-ins, so I'd call this a win. Incredibly low turnout, but Dems will obviously like to see that this was nowhere near Hochul or even Schumer levels.

That's all I really wanted to see out of this special election. I don't know what it truly says about New York swinging and trending right or not, but the 2022 results probably won't be the norm going forward, even if there is still a rightward swing.

I think that was an outlier due to Hochul's dreadful campaign.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

We finally got a special election in a diverse urbanized district with a lot of people who are neither white nor black.  This result in NYC seems broadly consistent with R's outright winning the Hispanic and Asian vote in 2024? 

Not with single digits turnout, and also mostly driven by NYC issues and patterns that don't matter outside of NYC.

1. The Asians/Hispanics that voted in 2024 and not in this election are most likely very blue but I’m growing increasingly convinced the “only vote in presidential years” ones are probably Lean R

[warandwar]

We finally got a special election in a diverse urbanized district with a lot of people who are neither white nor black.  This result in NYC seems broadly consistent with R's outright winning the Hispanic and Asian vote in 2024? 


The question I have here is by how much would the R have won by if the Orthodox Jewish community had voted as R as they did in 2020?  Or as R as they did in 2022?  And how would that compare with the actual Biden/Trump or Hochul/Zeldin results?  That should probably be the benchmark unless we for some reason anticipate the leaders of this community would endorse Biden or congressional Dems in 2024.

The most non white section of this district (Pomonk) voted strongly blue. Whitestone is still a cop (i mean italian) neighborhood, the asian neighborhoods are further east in Bayside.
This jewish community is like the base of the Weprins. Very different from williamsburg or crown heights.

[wbrocks67]

PA special election coming this Tuesday.

From 2022:
Requests were DEM 78.1 / REP 12.6 / IND 8.8
Returns were DEM 78.1 / REP 12.3 / IND 9.3

Final result in 2022 was D 63.6% - R 36.4%

https://twitter.com/blockedfreq/status/1702115780706422888

[Duke of York]

PA special election coming this Tuesday.

From 2022:
Requests were DEM 78.1 / REP 12.6 / IND 8.8
Returns were DEM 78.1 / REP 12.3 / IND 9.3

Final result in 2022 was D 63.6% - R 36.4%

https://twitter.com/blockedfreq/status/1702115780706422888

Very impressive for a special election. With a one seat majority you can't take any chances. In the three specials early this year Democrats framed them as deciding control of the house and it worked. Turnout was decent.

[Atlas Force]

https://twitter.com/DKElections/status/1702115143209885751

[Duke of York]

https://twitter.com/DKElections/status/1702115143209885751

wow. Its as if hes not even trying. money isn't everything but with numbers like that Id say this is slightly lean D.