State Legislature Special Election Megathread v3

[MT Treasurer]

R trends lagging behind in a low-turnout special state legislative election with unrepresentative turnout patterns (especially in a state like IA) isn’t surprising. This election was not 'bad news' for the GOP, and expecting Republicans to match or exceed Trump's margin in a race like this would be rather foolish.

[MT Treasurer]

Wisconsin SD13 results:

Jagler 51.16
Winker 43.77
Zimmerman 4.55
Schmitz 0.52

D overperformance, and a pretty substantial one. R+7.39 here, while 2018 was R+18.18.

Even if you assign the entire third-party vote to Republicans (ASP would probably split more evenly, but whatever), that's still only R+12.46.

I guess that just goes to show how powerful the Trump-on-the-ballot effect is in Wisconsin.

It just shows that when the main statewide race features two democrats many republicans voters are simply not going to turn out to the polls. (What a surprise).

Don’t ruin the narrative/disturb the echo chamber.

[MT Treasurer]

It's a solid result for the Dems, with the greens included it's about 61-39 when giving Libertarians to GOP.

Assuming that all Green voters would have broken for the Democrat is nonsense.

[MT Treasurer]

100% now reporting in IA HD-37:

Mike Bousselot GOP    5,920    51.64%
Andrea Phillips DEM    5,543    48.36%

Decision Desk has called it for Bousselot.

[MT Treasurer]

Trends are real I guess. Maybe 2022 will be a 2020/2018 in the suburbs but a 2016 or worse everywhere else.

Or maybe one shouldn’t read this much into a single special election with very low turnout.

[MT Treasurer]

Well individual races shouldn't be read into, but one bright spot for democrats is that there's no real trend of underperformance in state house races like the republicans had in 2017 before the 2018 blue wave.

Can’t emphasize enough that that also has a lot do with the Democratic base becoming increasingly affluent and high-propensity. Even larger patterns in these state legislative elections are only worth cautiously reading into if there’s no large disparity in the turnout of the two parties (especially relative to what we can expect from a regular November election).

[MT Treasurer]

This was a Trump+16 seat, Dems did not have a chance here once the incumbent retired.

It’s still hilarious because those are the 'low-propensity Republicans' Abby Finkenauer/(IA) Democrats are counting on to say home in 2022 "without Trump on the ballot" (as if IA's Republican trend totally doesn’t predate Trump or any other R nominee wouldn’t have easily won the state or whatever).

[MT Treasurer]

Oh I agree, the "low propensity Republicans" stuff was always a meme, if anything there'll be complacent "low propensity" Democrats who will stay home, because they don't feel a need to vote (this happened to Dems in 2010 and 2014, and happened to the GOP in 2018).

I’m not entirely sold on any "low-propensity Democrats" narrative either. I feel like high-turnout midterm elections will increasingly be the rule rather than exception and both the R base and D base will be fairly engaged going into 2022, which will seriously reduce potential for R gains in rapidly D-trending areas but also make both the Senate and the House something of an uphill battle for Democrats. While many overstate how high-propensity the D base has become (and rule out the possibility of even slight R gains with more reliable/suburban/college-educated voters, many of whom are still swing voters and not Democrats) and/or exaggerate how "unreliable" the D base was in 2010 and 2014 (or 2013, as McAuliffe's win that year illustrates), the overall CW that the D base has become more reliable even in off-year/midterm elections is probably true, and I’d argue that many of the high-profile special elections (NM-1, GA runoffs, less so CA because of the all-mail system) have confirmed this. However, the flip side of this is that we also haven’t seen Republicans lose ground (compared to 2020) in most Biden-era special elections, and there’s every reason to believe that the November elections will see higher turnout than the special elections.

My issue was more that the "low-propensity Republicans/Trumpists" theory was particularly ludicrous when applied to the analysis of Iowa elections given that Ernst actually did better in 2014 than 2020 (that state swung more sharply to the right than any other Obama state/swing state in 2014), and that was without Trump being a factor in a year when Democrats held up very well in other D-leaning states at the federal level. This 'low-propensity Trump voters' narrative also completely downplays a host of other factors which would more than compensate for a modest drop-off in "Trumpist turnout" in most cases (party out of the White House being more engaged than when they are in control of the White House, state's general rightward shift continuing unabated, the serious decline in Biden's approval numbers, the probability of slight R gains in suburban areas similar to D gains in non-college-educated areas in 2018 vs. 2016, etc.). Also, the vast majority of Trump 2020 voters in IA (and elsewhere) aren’t "Trumpists" so much as they are Republicans, i.e., they’re largely loyal to Trump but also voted for Romney in 2012.

[MT Treasurer]

Maybe the low-propensity Trump supporter hypothesis might have some merit after all.

But this didn’t happen at all in IA, where Republicans performed very well in that special election (and arguably outperformed expectations). It’s crazy how much IA and NH have diverged since 2012 after voting so similarly five presidential elections in a row.

NH-SEN 2010 was arguably a more anomalous result than IN-PRES 2008 (which was at least partly foreshadowed by the 2006 House gains in IN).

[MT Treasurer]

The one reason the Jacksonville election should concern Democrats is that that city/Duval County is generally similarly 'inelastic' as GA and probably the one part of the state closest (demographically/electorally) to GA, so if we’re seeing this kind of swing away from Democrats here and it’s a sign of things to come, even GA's more 'inelastic' character isn’t going to prevent a GOP win in that state given that GA Republicans only need a fraction of the Jacksonville swing. A 52-48 GOP win in GA honestly doesn’t sound that inconceivable either in a very Republican environment.

This is also a victory for DeSantis, who involved himself heavily in these local campaigns.

[MT Treasurer]

The results tonight suggest that if the economy improves this year and next, and Biden doesn't have any major scandals or foreign policy disasters, the Republicans don't have much of a path to reclaiming the trifecta.

These results do not suggest anything about the November 2024 national/federal elections, of course.

I would also add that Youngkin himself only won by 2 in what was a perfect storm against Democrats (wrong issues, wrong candidate, wrong national environment, no blunders on the R side & R convention system). If anything, that election actually proved how resilient Democratic strength in Virginia is (it’s interesting how people have recently displayed a habit of downplaying it or overcompensating for having failed to predict Youngkin's win).