Special Election megathread (5/21: CA-20)

[Lief 🗽]

Molinari probably wins the new NY 19, Ryan is running in NY 18, but this tells you about the Ryan v Vance rave if we can have Pat Ryan win so can Tim Ryan that's probably why the media isn't giving this race much attention

Sad to report that “esteemed prognosticators” at the Crystal Ball are just plagiarizing your posts now, old friend.

https://twitter.com/jmilescoleman/status/1562472512880971777?s=21&t=sktDizJh...

[wbrocks67]

NYT has now taken out those extra Columbia results, so must've been a glitch.

They're down to 92% reported in the district though, so we may have a decent chunk of absentees still to count from either Sunday/Monday or the ones accepted thru 8/30

[Badger]

It is looking like a neutral environment ATM which doesn't make sense even with Dobbs. Are Republicans really capable of choking against a President with a 40% approval rating who presides over a 9% inflation rate?

I mean the GOP in 1978 in a midterm after a close presidential defeat and a big win in VA the previous year had a very disappointing midterm .

Disappointing? The GOP picked up a net of three Senate seats, 15 house seats, and six Governor mansions. I mean, that may not be 2006 or 2014 level wave elections, but I'd hardly call it disappointing. I suspect Republicans would be doing backflips if they pulled that off this november.

[Badger]

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1562295564557066240

This is the correct take. Tonight's result showed that republicans won't have some huge popular vote win come November, or earn any kind of mandate. They'll get the House because of gerrymandering.

Ah, gerrymandering coming to the rescue of Republicans having to deal with popular will once again.

Inb4 something something a Republic not a democracy blah blah blah.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1562408840272007168

[OSR stands with Israel]

It is looking like a neutral environment ATM which doesn't make sense even with Dobbs. Are Republicans really capable of choking against a President with a 40% approval rating who presides over a 9% inflation rate?

I mean the GOP in 1978 in a midterm after a close presidential defeat and a big win in VA the previous year had a very disappointing midterm .

Disappointing? The GOP picked up a net of three Senate seats, 15 house seats, and six Governor mansions. I mean, that may not be 2006 or 2014 level wave elections, but I'd hardly call it disappointing. I suspect Republicans would be doing backflips if they pulled that off this november.

Look at where they started with though. The GOP should have won a lot more given how deep of a hole they were in to begin with .

Like even after those midterms we still had less seats than we did from anytime from 66-74

[MT Treasurer]

It should probably give some pause that the formula here for Dem overperformance is (relatively) great turnout in Dem counties overwhelming weaker margins elsewhere. Would be pretty shocking to have similar turnout differential come November.

This is crucial. Some on here are going to be very disappointed when national turnout in November reaches 110-120m voters.

Well this means that 2010 and 2014 won't happen again because democrats aren't forgetting to vote lol

This isn’t accurate — Democrats didn’t "forget to vote" in 2010 and 2014, otherwise their defeats would have been a lot more resounding. When you examine the turnout differential in individual races on a county-by-county basis (e.g. VA-SEN 2014), you’ll see that the drop-off in turnout didn’t benefit Republicans at all — in some races/states, there’s even a case to be made that it hurt the GOP (e.g. MI/MN 2014). Henry County GA also couldn’t have flipped from Romney 2012 to Nunn/Carter 2014 if Democrats had stayed home en masse. This is mostly just a media narrative akin to the baseless "Republicans are afraid of high turnout because they know that they can’t win with it" which also flies in the face of those special elections, where Democrats have quite obviously been the ones benefiting from lower turnout, something that has been true for many cycles now, which is why I don’t get why we’re acting "surprised" every single time Democrats "outperform expectations" in a special election with a completely unrepresentative electorate. Under our current party coalitions, it’s basically always going to be the case that the more affluent, more college-educated, more suburban/urban, more engaged/emotionally invested (politically), and far better organized party does particularly well in this type of election and performs a few percentage points above the general (November) partisan baseline of a district — it’s the new normal and not some "surprise," and I’d never try to predict a special election based on how a district voted in a November election (or vice versa).

[ProgressiveModerate]

It should probably give some pause that the formula here for Dem overperformance is (relatively) great turnout in Dem counties overwhelming weaker margins elsewhere. Would be pretty shocking to have similar turnout differential come November.

This is crucial. Some on here are going to be very disappointed when national turnout in November reaches 110-120m voters.

Well this means that 2010 and 2014 won't happen again because democrats aren't forgetting to vote lol

This isn’t accurate — Democrats didn’t "forget to vote" in 2010 and 2014, otherwise their defeats would have been a lot more resounding. When you examine the turnout differential in individual races on a county-by-county basis (e.g. VA-SEN 2014), you’ll see that the drop-off in turnout didn’t benefit Republicans at all — in some races/states, there’s even a case to be made that it hurt the GOP (e.g. MI/MN 2014). Henry County GA also couldn’t have flipped from Romney 2012 to Nunn/Carter 2014 if Democrats had stayed home en masse. This is mostly just a media narrative akin to the baseless "Republicans are afraid of high turnout because they know that they can’t win with it" which also flies in the face of those special elections, where Democrats have quite obviously been the ones benefiting from lower turnout, something that has been true for many cycles now, which is why I don’t get why we’re acting "surprised" every single time Democrats "outperform expectations" in a special election with a completely unrepresentative electorate. Under our current party coalitions, it’s basically always going to be the case that the more affluent, more college-educated, more suburban/urban, more engaged/emotionally invested (politically), and far better organized party does particularly well in this type of election and performs a few percentage points above the general (November) partisan baseline of a district — it’s the new normal and not some "surprise," and I’d never try to predict a special election based on how a district voted in a November election (or vice versa).

In 2010/2014, both sides had dreadful turnout but it's just Dems overall experienced a dropoff. Even in 2018 which was widely considered a D wave, Republicans still got 10 million more votes for US House than 2014, but Democrats got (25 million).

I think polarization would make it nearly impossible that one party has really strong turnout in a midterm while the other party's turnout completely crashes. In 2022, both parties will put up solid turnout for a midterm (comparable to 2018), it's really just a question of who's turnout is better.

And finally, one other factor to consider is that as recently as 2018, incumbent Dems who really weren't seriously targetted in the House were able to have 20 or even 30 point overperformances in a few cases which helped pad their national win margin. It's very unlikely either side will experience this in 2022 and the biggest overperformances in partisanship will be closer to 10 points.

[Brittain33]

Henry County GA also couldn’t have flipped from Romney 2012 to Nunn/Carter 2014 if Democrats had stayed home en masse.

Allow me to nitpick this one point - Georgia has always been an inelastic exception to national trends and moved on its own path of demographic change, especially in 2014.

[Roll Roons]

One aspect of these specials that hasn't been discussed at all: New York finally (mostly) got it together when it comes to counting votes!!!!

[Minnesota Mike]

One aspect of these specials that hasn't been discussed at all: New York finally (mostly) got it together when it comes to counting votes!!!!

How many absentees are still out? I believe anything that arrived after last Friday still needs to be counted. Still much better. Now they need to improve their results website.

[GeorgiaModerate]

One aspect of these specials that hasn't been discussed at all: New York finally (mostly) got it together when it comes to counting votes!!!!

How many absentees are still out? I believe anything that arrived after last Friday still needs to be counted. Still much better. Now they need to improve their results website.

I don't know how many there are, but they could still come in for a few days.  I believe New York accepts ballots until a week after Election Day as long as they're postmarked by E-Day.

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://twitter.com/RealPData/status/1562563085595844609

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/RealPData/status/1562563085595844609

And the point is....?

You're going to have to provide more details than a vague tweet about what the actual procedure was, and what the tweet is trying to imply.

[soundchaser]

https://twitter.com/RealPData/status/1562563085595844609

Care to elaborate on what on Earth they're talking about?

[soundchaser]

On a different note:

https://twitter.com/IvanMoore1/status/1562540452611387393?s=20&t=naYrZwUvxiZ...

[wbrocks67]

*If* that's true, then Peltola has a very, very good chance.

She had a good chance with the ~8-12K left, but if there's 20K and they're from the most blue areas, she's definitely still in this.

[Oryxslayer]

Next scheduled update from the Last Frontier is on Friday.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

"The ones that have been include the Mat-Su"
Mat-Su Borough is very Republican. Mat-Su voted 72-24 Trump in 2020; while the rest of the state voted only 50-46 Trump.
This is more good news for Peltola.

[Sestak]

One aspect of these specials that hasn't been discussed at all: New York finally (mostly) got it together when it comes to counting votes!!!!

On the other hand, they were an absolute disaster when it came to conveying how much of their vote had already been counted and what was still left; still a very poor showing for them in my book.

[Progressive Pessimist]

One aspect of these specials that hasn't been discussed at all: New York finally (mostly) got it together when it comes to counting votes!!!!

On the other hand, they were an absolute disaster when it came to conveying how much of their vote had already been counted and what was still left; still a very poor showing for them in my book.

Baby steps. It's progress in some way.

[Oryxslayer]

One aspect of these specials that hasn't been discussed at all: New York finally (mostly) got it together when it comes to counting votes!!!!

On the other hand, they were an absolute disaster when it came to conveying how much of their vote had already been counted and what was still left; still a very poor showing for them in my book.

Baby steps. It's progress in some way.

I would put the blame on that for the press. Yes, "x precincts reporting" is now a faulty piece of info, but "x% reporting" is a simplification of the count that masks important processing information. Like a lot of people could see that Ryan would win about 30 minutes before the calls were made, but only  because they were the ones who went to the county boards and saw what precincts were there.

Seems like the ideal way to present ballot count estimations would be 2-4 "progress bars per county depending upon what is allowed in the state: mail vote, early vote, E-Day, and others like Provisionals or military. But might be too much clutter.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So Ryan only won two counties which is pretty weird for a non-urban district. What are Ulster and Columbia counties like?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So Ryan only won two counties which is pretty weird for a non-urban district. What are Ulster and Columbia counties like?

I get the impression that Ulster County is basically like Vermont, while Columbia is probably "to the left" on social issues while being fiscally moderate. Both counties lean Democratic, to varying degrees.
Torie would be able to speak with more eloquence on this topic, I feel.

[ProgressiveModerate]

So Ryan only won two counties which is pretty weird for a non-urban district. What are Ulster and Columbia counties like?

I get the impression that Ulster County is basically like Vermont, while Columbia is probably "to the left" on social issues while being fiscally moderate. Both counties lean Democratic, to varying degrees.
Torie would be able to speak with more eloquence on this topic, I feel.

Ulster County is very high in tourism and second homes from NYC folks. Def akin to many VT communities. Columbia is more of Massachusetts spillover