State Legislature Special Election Megathread v3

[Minnesota Mike]

It sounds like there are a few special elections tonight. Some of them are non-competitive districts in Florida, but one election in Maine looking interesting. It’s a mostly white 58-41 dem district that might give a good sense of the environment. Anybody know if this is true?

Jim Boyle (D): 57%
Tim Thorsen (R): 38%
Suzanne Phillips (I): 5%

https://bangordailynews.com/2022/01/11/politics/former-gubernatorial-candidate-easily-holds-portland-area-legislative-seat-for-democrats/

[Minnesota Mike]

Republicans hold AR-SD-07 in Washington County, Arkansas, by just 34 votes (!), or 0.84%. This seat went for Trump by 14%. Jim Bob Duggar ran in the R primary earlier but lost.

I am now going to use this result to predict a uniform swing of 13% towards the Democrats in every race in the nation this fall. That's how it works right?

[Minnesota Mike]

Last Tuesday there was a special election in CA Assembly District 49. The Democrat won by 67%-33% (it's CA so results will trickle in for another month). In 2020 Democrats won this district 68%-32%. There was also another AD primary in a San Francisco area district with all Democrats.

[Minnesota Mike]

A couple elections tonight in Florida. SD-33 and HD-88. Both are heavily Democratic and majority Black.

With most of the vote in

SD-33:

Rosalind Osgood (DEM) 80.65%
Joseph C. Carter (REP) 19.35%

HD-88:

Jervonte "Tae" Edmonds (DEM) 80.02%
Guarina Torres (REP) 19.98%

Both would be a small improvement for Democrats on the Biden/Trump numbers.

[Minnesota Mike]

Special election tonight in NY 43rd Assembly District. 95% in.

1       Brian A. Cunningham    Democratic            1848            62.18%   
 
2       Mesidor Azor    Republican                        63    2.12%   
 
3       Mesidor Azor    Conservative                        25    0.84%   
 
4       Jelanie Deshong    Working Families     1028    34.59%   
 
5       WRITE-IN                                                       8    0.27%

Extremely blue district and very low turnout but no sign of of improvement Republican/Conservative candidate over past elections, Trump got 8% in 2016.

[Minnesota Mike]

Wtf

https://mobile.twitter.com/myster_E_23/status/1508985057649696771

Welp that's it then. Uniform swing means Republicans will have around 400 seats in the House and sweep the Senate & Governor races.

[Minnesota Mike]

Glad to see we are overinterpreting low turnout special election margins already. The only thing that really matters is Dems flipped a seat and now have a much safer margin in the VA Sen. Too bad the Dem had to be a former Packer though .

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/DKElections/status/1628186185234366464

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/baseballot/status/1658664564962074625

Always run like you are a couple points behind. Good for PA Dems taking nothing for granted.

[Minnesota Mike]

Not really the place to post this but not really worth another thread. Three props for goverment money to build a new arena for the Arizona Coyotes (NHL) go down.

https://twitter.com/Garrett_Archer/status/1658669244614336513

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/DKElections/status/1686544753406492672

[Minnesota Mike]

https://twitter.com/IAStartingLine/status/1696729555183026565

Not a legislative special but an interesting local special. 2020 election denial don't play even in a red county. Warren County IA.

[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.

[Minnesota Mike]

Reminder: the Minnesota Legislative District 52B special election is tonight.  Results will be here after polls close at 8pm CST.  The seat is Safe DFL.

Special election in FL HD 118 as well. It's in Miami-Dade county so past results have been all over the map but the last occupant was a Republican who won by a big margin, 68-32.

 https://enr.electionsfl.org/DAD/3465/Summary/

Trump won this district 58-42

[Minnesota Mike]

FL HD-118 after mail/in person early.

Mike Redondo (REP) 50.98% 3,841

Johnny Gonzalo Farias (DEM) 46.28% 3,487

Francisco 'Frank' De La Paz (NPA) 2.75% 207

Not a lot of election day votes but what there are should favor the Republican.

[Minnesota Mike]

With 47 of 51 election day precincts in. Nearly final results.

Mike Redondo (REP) 51.71% 4,505

Johnny Gonzalo Farias (DEM) 45.71% 3,982

Francisco 'Frank' De La Paz (NPA) 2.58% 225

[Minnesota Mike]

Before the polls close in MN-52B some past margins:

Biden (20) +29
Smith (20) +23
Walz (22) +30
Ellison (22) +19
Richardson* (22) +24

* DFL state Rep who won the seat in 2022 and resigned causing this special.

[Minnesota Mike]

Everybody has something to hang their hat on tonight. I didn't expect 54B to be Biden/Trump numbers, this is an area of the state where Trump is toxic and ran well behind generic Republicans, but I expected more like Tina Smith's +23 than the +16-18 it is likely to end up. Oh well.

[Minnesota Mike]

Another example of why you take party turnout with a grain of salt in local races.

[Minnesota Mike]

Another example of why you take party turnout with a grain of salt in local races.

As usual these days, Dems outperforming the supposed baseline of the electorate hard thanks to persuasion/conversion.

No, it's because every single right-leaning person has reregistered as R in Florida. This gives R a huge registration advantage in Florida, but it doesn't translate to actual votes.

I was talking about the voter registration of the actual voters in this special election, which is readily available in real time on Florida counties websites. There were over 1,000 more registered Republicans voting than Democrats. "Twitter election experts" were all over these stats and predicting an easy Republican win.

[Minnesota Mike]

Hate to be that guy but there is a lot of over reacting to an election with less than 6,000 total votes.