Special Election megathread (4/30: NY-26)

[Roll Roons]

I have to say, both Flood and Brooks are like the epitome of "Generic R" and "Generic D" on basically everything. Obviously I didn't witness the campaign first hand but everything about them makes it seem like they were grown in a lab.

They were nominated by the parties instead of elected via primaries, which is generally a breeding ground for generic candidates.

It seems to depend. In this case, yes.

But don't forget that Mike Lee came into office because he beat a more moderate incumbent at a party convention.

[MRS DONNA SHALALA]

I have to say, both Flood and Brooks are like the epitome of "Generic R" and "Generic D" on basically everything. Obviously I didn't witness the campaign first hand but everything about them makes it seem like they were grown in a lab.

They were nominated by the parties instead of elected via primaries, which is generally a breeding ground for generic candidates.

It seems to depend. In this case, yes.

But don't forget that Mike Lee came into office because he beat a more moderate incumbent at a party convention.

I didn't realize that! I was thinking about Glenn Younkin when I typed my post.

[GALeftist]

Democrats who dismissed TX-34 as meaningless creaming themselves over losing by less than expected, how utterly pathetic

Literally who dismissed TX-34 as meaningless? The overwhelming consensus was that it confirmed a dramatic R trend in the RGV at the very least and perhaps low-education Hispanics if not Hispanics in general.

[walleye26]

As Lancaster county dumped the rest of its early vote, the margin has gone down to 5.8 points, 52.9 to 47.1.

[Schiff for Senate]

It blows my mind that people are extrapolating from a race with such pathetically low turnout. Dems are going to have a bad midterm, but this election has a small fraction of the votes of even the 2017 special elections where Dems fought in Republican seats. We see the 2020 realignment with extra apathy and a small swing away from Biden. There’s a good reason all the Republicans on Twitter keep calling back to Clinton and Obama, not Biden, for a comparison.

Collin and Denton for Cameron is a good trade.

"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in McAllen, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Dallas and you can repeat that in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada."

You do realize that Mexicans do not only live in Brownsville but also in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and, basically, throughout Texas? Right now, it might appear that the "trade" is worthwhile but we are a rapidly growing demographic and Democrats have a lot to lose from writing us off - there's nothing preventing Mexican-Americans from giving Trump 60 or even 65 percent of the vote in Texas in 2024.

Not writing anyone off other than a marginal voter in the RGV who likes Trump. Is there evidence urban Hispanics are voting like RGV and other rural Hispanics? I don’t see people saying that any of those urban Hispanic districts are at risk like TX-34. And I can match Collin and Denton County with diverse suburbs all over the country if we want to extrapolate, too.

Agreed with this. The Hispanic rightward swing in TX was in the RGV. Democrats absolutely need to be careful and try to reverse it, but as far as I've seen, there's no real evidence that suburban/urban Hispanics had a tremendous rightward swing (or ANY rightward swing) the way Hispanics in the RGV did. That said, I still do think Hispanics, even if just in the RGV, are a crucial demographic and Flores winning was a bad sign.

[wbrocks67]

As Lancaster county dumped the rest of its early vote, the margin has gone down to 5.8 points, 52.9 to 47.1.

Wow. Even better than expected, a really great performance for the D here.

[Southern Reactionary Dem]

It blows my mind that people are extrapolating from a race with such pathetically low turnout. Dems are going to have a bad midterm, but this election has a small fraction of the votes of even the 2017 special elections where Dems fought in Republican seats. We see the 2020 realignment with extra apathy and a small swing away from Biden. There’s a good reason all the Republicans on Twitter keep calling back to Clinton and Obama, not Biden, for a comparison.

Collin and Denton for Cameron is a good trade.

"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in McAllen, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Dallas and you can repeat that in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada."

You do realize that Mexicans do not only live in Brownsville but also in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and, basically, throughout Texas? Right now, it might appear that the "trade" is worthwhile but we are a rapidly growing demographic and Democrats have a lot to lose from writing us off - there's nothing preventing Mexican-Americans from giving Trump 60 or even 65 percent of the vote in Texas in 2024.

Not writing anyone off other than a marginal voter in the RGV who likes Trump. Is there evidence urban Hispanics are voting like RGV and other rural Hispanics? I don’t see people saying that any of those urban Hispanic districts are at risk like TX-34. And I can match Collin and Denton County with diverse suburbs all over the country if we want to extrapolate, too.

Agreed with this. The Hispanic rightward swing in TX was in the RGV. Democrats absolutely need to be careful and try to reverse it, but as far as I've seen, there's no real evidence that suburban/urban Hispanics had a tremendous rightward swing (or ANY rightward swing) the way Hispanics in the RGV did. That said, I still do think Hispanics, even if just in the RGV, are a crucial demographic and Flores winning was a bad sign.

They definitely swung but not to the same extent. Just look at the precinct-level trend maps of the DFW area or Harris County on a site like Dave's redistricting and then look at the demographics of those precincts which swung towards Trump. The trend is pretty clear, if not as large. Heavy Hispanic precincts that had split 80-20 Dem before were looking more like 60-40 Dem. White voters however shifted sharply towards Biden.

[ProgressiveModerate]

It blows my mind that people are extrapolating from a race with such pathetically low turnout. Dems are going to have a bad midterm, but this election has a small fraction of the votes of even the 2017 special elections where Dems fought in Republican seats. We see the 2020 realignment with extra apathy and a small swing away from Biden. There’s a good reason all the Republicans on Twitter keep calling back to Clinton and Obama, not Biden, for a comparison.

Collin and Denton for Cameron is a good trade.

"For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in McAllen, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Dallas and you can repeat that in New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada."

You do realize that Mexicans do not only live in Brownsville but also in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and, basically, throughout Texas? Right now, it might appear that the "trade" is worthwhile but we are a rapidly growing demographic and Democrats have a lot to lose from writing us off - there's nothing preventing Mexican-Americans from giving Trump 60 or even 65 percent of the vote in Texas in 2024.

Not writing anyone off other than a marginal voter in the RGV who likes Trump. Is there evidence urban Hispanics are voting like RGV and other rural Hispanics? I don’t see people saying that any of those urban Hispanic districts are at risk like TX-34. And I can match Collin and Denton County with diverse suburbs all over the country if we want to extrapolate, too.

Agreed with this. The Hispanic rightward swing in TX was in the RGV. Democrats absolutely need to be careful and try to reverse it, but as far as I've seen, there's no real evidence that suburban/urban Hispanics had a tremendous rightward swing (or ANY rightward swing) the way Hispanics in the RGV did. That said, I still do think Hispanics, even if just in the RGV, are a crucial demographic and Flores winning was a bad sign.

I'd also ad that Dems still net more votes out of most urban Hispanic communities in Texas even as the margin narrowed. Post-2020 special elections seem to suggest a lot of the rightwards shifts we saw with black and Hispanic voters in downtowns of large cities was due to high turnout as special elections have seen some pretty significant reversions. That's not to say Dems should take there voters for granted and not try to appeal to these voters, just there's no need for massive panic unless more elections come which show it as a fundamental shift even with lower turnout.

The RGV seems to be a more fundamental shift of voters actually changing who they are voting for based on issues and optics, which should concern Dems and even though turnout increased, Dems saw a significant dent in their margins and sometimes their raw vote totals.

With suburban communities, you have a spectrum of suburban communities that have shifted left due to a significant number of voters switching to shifting left due to the suburb itself changing.

A good example of this would be Atlanta, where this spectrum shines. In whiter highly educated Cobb suburbs which are pretty well developed and aren't growing a ton, evidence suggests that much of Dems gains were due to vote-switching from prior elections. In 2020, we saw downballot canidates significantly underperform Biden in these communities, and generally speaking the suburbs are pretty similar demographically to what they were 10 or 20 years ago. On the flip side, you have Gwinnett County where Dem gains are more fundamental, and due to general growth and diversification. Many communities in the county have had very consistent leftwards swings reguardless of the fundementals of the years, and infact, Ossoff and Warnock overperformed Biden in most of the County in their runoff elections. Even if Republicans ran a candidate tailored for Gwinett County, it'd be literally impossible for them to get a Bush level performance because it's a fundamentally different County now. This is the kind of Dem suburban gains that are likely to stick and even grow whereas any gains in suburbs at the other end of the spectrum may be more iffy.

Also as a sidenote, I really don't like lumping "suburbs" into one giant category as the term covers a vague bunch of communities, many of which are completely different from one another. Rmbr that a lot of suburbs have been shifting right too!

All in all though, while a strong performance by Dems in RGV is certainly helpful, it's not something they NEED to win Texas if they are able to garner strong performances elsewhere in the state. However, the GOP will likely need to be able to hold down some suburbs, likely whiter college educated suburbs such as University Party and Hunters Creek Village which are already well defined and where there was significant vote splitting in 2020.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Let me start with the obvious disclaimer that I'm fully aware these sort of numbers rarely have much impact on the general election even in an actual swing area, and this almost certainly doesn't mean anything in relation to the results.

With that said, I have noticed the early voting numbers for this are kind of weird. You can see the statewide ones here: https://www.sos.state.mn.us/election-administration-campaigns/data-maps/absentee-data

So far "turnout" is pretty low which isn't a surprise, Minnesota doesn't really have an early/absentee voting tradition and most of these applications are probably just preparing for the general election considering there's not many interesting races here, the only seriously contested statewide primary is R-Attorney General, there's some notable non-partisan races like Hennepin County Attorney/Sheriff but of course no one votes on those outside of Hennepin County. But Blue Earth County is a definite outlier. It has 1,859 votes returned so far, and beats every non-metro county except St. Louis and Stearns, both that have more than twice the population. It even beats Anoka County, which has more than 5x the population! And it's not just a case of this district being more motivated, since it even beats Olmsted County which is also in the district and has more than double the population.

So here's one possible explanation that popped into my head: more college students are voting absentee because they're not in Mankato over the summer but will be back in November so it makes more sense to just vote by mail than change their residence back to their parents' and then again back to Mankato. But if that's the reason, why is there such anemic turnout in Winona? It has less than 1/5 the votes, but 70% of the population.

So another explanation: The Mankato College Democrats and Blue Earth County DFL are really pushing GOTV and nowhere else is...which would fit in very well with my experience in the Blue Earth County DFL LOL. Us pushing our weight there while Winona sits on their hands is kind of par for the course (with the exception of 2016 where college students just stayed home everywhere in the state.)

That said this isn't a very important election, even if it was a swing seat it's only for who holds it for a couple months so it wouldn't surprise me if the Blue Earth County DFL is trying to do a show of force of sorts but realizes the race isn't going to be competitive (although an improvement over 2020 numbers is possible and could be a propaganda victory ala NE-01.) Ultimately though it's not important even in regards to the special election, 1,859 is still significantly less than the 7,929 votes Blue Earth County cast in the 2020 primary, which lacked any sexy races at all.

Another point though: A lot of rural Minnesota is vote by mail only and was well before Covid, and though this is more of a northern Minnesota thing (you can probably see the results in places like Cass and Itasca), it's still a thing in a lot of southern Minnesota townships too, so this could show lagging rural turnout...but we'll see. Cottonwood County for example has laughably low turnout, but it also looks like even the rural townships there just vote in the same location as the closest town.

[Skill and Chance]

Swing map.

From what?  2020 President?

[Koharu]

Another point though: A lot of rural Minnesota is vote by mail only and was well before Covid, and though this is more of a northern Minnesota thing (you can probably see the results in places like Cass and Itasca), it's still a thing in a lot of southern Minnesota townships too, so this could show lagging rural turnout...but we'll see. Cottonwood County for example has laughably low turnout, but it also looks like even the rural townships there just vote in the same location as the closest town.

It's this. MN-01 is where I grew up, and my dad lives in a vote-by-mail township. He's not in Blue Earth county, but his neighbors, who also vote by mail, are. I'm sure that there are Mankato students getting their votes in, too, so those two things combined would do it.

Also, according to local news, Ettinger tested positive for COVID and won't be able to do in-person events this week before the election.

[walleye26]

Any predictions for tomorrow? I’m going to guess that turnout in Rochester will be pretty high, and Blue Earth and Winona County vote blue, but they get overwhelmed everywhere else. My guess is R+4.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

It's a Toss-Up. R wins narrowly if I have to choose, but NE-1 and KS showed us that the GOP is on a downstream, and BBB finally passing may help D enthusiasm as well. The upset is brewing....

[It’s so Joever]

R+8.

[Devout Centrist]

R +14

[It’s so Joever]

I did another snap map scan of the entire district today, and it’s nothing like Kansas so far. Turnout is much much lower (as anyone expected) with only three voting snaps in total. Two were nonspecific in partisan preference (one was an older white man from rural Winona County, the other was a younger white woman from Rochester) and one was an explicitly pro-GOP voting post (in this case in Rochester actually)
Granted it’s early, but anecdotal evidence is not on the side of Ettinger.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I should note that MN-1 isn’t the sort of district where you’d expect a Dem resurgence to rear its head.  I’d be cautious about reading too much into a poor showing here.

[Attorney General, LGC Speaker, and Former PPT Dwarven Dragon]

for tonight: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/09/us/elections/results-minnesota-us-house-district-1-special-election.html

polls close at 9 ET

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I should note that MN-1 isn’t the sort of district where you’d expect a Dem resurgence to rear its head.  I’d be cautious about reading too much into a poor showing here.

Parts of it though are definitely worth looking at. Turnout in Rochester for example.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I should note that MN-1 isn’t the sort of district where you’d expect a Dem resurgence to rear its head.  I’d be cautious about reading too much into a poor showing here.

Parts of it though are definitely worth looking at. Turnout in Rochester for example.

Agreed Re: Rochester, just trying to head off some of the bad hot takes

[GeorgiaModerate]

I should note that MN-1 isn’t the sort of district where you’d expect a Dem resurgence to rear its head.  I’d be cautious about reading too much into a poor showing here.

Parts of it though are definitely worth looking at. Turnout in Rochester for example.

Agreed Re: Rochester, just trying to head off some of the bad hot takes

Takes!  Get your takes here!  We got hot takes, cold takes, lukewarm takes!  We got good takes, bad takes, and takes that make you go wtf!  We got all your takes here!

-- Proposed new Talk Elections slogan

[MT Treasurer]

With most special elections, it’s important not too read too much (if anything) into them because unrepresentative turnout patterns, local issues, and down-ballot shifts lagging behind national/federal trends don’t really allow for any predictive accuracy. However, then there are some special elections which are very accurate barometers of fall elections and have to be considered a sign of things to come, with you being delusional if you close your eyes to reality.

I’ll let you know in an hour or two which category this one falls into after studying the issues and the quality of the candidates a little.

[It’s so Joever]

Just looking at turnout differences in the primaries for MN-01 RIP Ettinger lmao

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Just looking at turnout differences in the primaries for MN-01 RIP Ettinger lmao

He's obviously probably not going to win, but there's zero in from Olmsted, Blue Earth or Winona counties so this isn't a representative sample at all to put it mildly.

[It’s so Joever]

Just looking at turnout differences in the primaries for MN-01 RIP Ettinger lmao

He's obviously probably not going to win, but there's zero in from Olmsted, Blue Earth or Winona counties so this isn't a representative sample at all to put it mildly.

Its literally Nicollet LMAO