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

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https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1338970272129572864

Not a surprise by any means, but Bernie endorses Turner

Would a Bernie endorsement be enough to put her over the top?

Not necessarily, no, though it's probably useful in getting Turner to consolidate leftist support.

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Turner raised $630K by the end of last year-

https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1345832987338960898

[Gracile]

Turner raised $630K by the end of last year-

https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1345832987338960898

Will be interesting to see if raising this much so quickly ends up discouraging any potential challengers from jumping in.

Possibly. The early Sanders endorsement was probably also critical in getting other potential left-wing candidates to stay out.

[Gracile]

Turner raised $630K by the end of last year-

https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1345832987338960898

Will be interesting to see if raising this much so quickly ends up discouraging any potential challengers from jumping in.

Possibly. The early Sanders endorsement was probably also critical in getting other potential left-wing candidates to stay out.

Folks, I know this forum severely underestimates the political savvyness of left wingers but come on. There's no way Nina Turner is dumb enough to punt away a safe house seat just so she can be the sacrificial lamb we put up in 2024.

We need somebody who doesn't have something to lose, Ben Jealous maybe?

I am a left-winger, and I don't appreciate how you directed an entire rant at something I didn't say which should have been directed at someone else in this thread. Do better.

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Data for Progress needs to poll this race at some point.

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Turner going on TV next week-

https://mobile.twitter.com/MediumBuying/status/1385590114697584644

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Here's the full footage of the incident, Brown misgendered her friend several times:

https://twitter.com/persistohio/status/1398084576413691909

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Still don't get why folks on Atlas seem to care about this race so much

Yes, why would people on a site called "Talk Elections" be interested in an upcoming election?

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I'm going to hold off making pronouncements until we get a better pollster in this race. Brown has picked up momentum and she's clearly not going to get blown out by 30 points, but it still seems like Turner is favored.

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Shirley Smith, one of the other candidates in the OH-11 race, is spreading the Newsweek article-

https://twitter.com/SenSASMITH/status/1420031158025428995

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^The reason I posted that tweet was because I felt it was important news that one of the minor candidates was spreading a hit piece about one of the major candidates. Your commentary in response to me was entirely unnecessary as sharing news is the primary purpose of this thread.

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Some (very early) turnout figures-

https://twitter.com/KosichJohn/status/1422537282037366800

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https://twitter.com/Taniel/status/1422705234686664719

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The fact that Turner went from a 35-point lead in her own polls to outright losing this race is just incredible.

It's worse than that: the fact that Turner went from as high as a 32-point lead in her opponent's internals to outright losing - & rather handily at that - is what's perhaps most incredible about all of this here.

I'd say that's more an indication that polling is basically crap (we've known that for a while, but we were flying blind with only these old internals as evidence of the state of the race).

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Excited to see Cherfilus-McCormick in Congress (if the apparent result still holds)!

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I’d like to update the thread title. What’s coming up?

AK-AL (Primary - 6/11, General - 8/16)
CA-22 (6/7)
MN-01 (8/9)
NE-01 (6/28)
NY-19 (8/23)
NY-23 (8/23)
TX-34 (Blanket primary 6/14, Runoff TBD if no candidate gets a majority)

[Gracile]

Flores is in the lead now, 46.8% to 46.3%.

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What was the 2020 house margins ?

Hagedorn won it by 3%, which was a considerable underperformance (given the national House picture that year) from Trump who won the district by 10% at the presidential level.

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It's interesting how mediocre the GOP's special election performances have been so far during the Biden era, especially when compared to how the Democrats did post-Trump inauguration leading up to the 2018 midterms. The KS-04 special in 2017 saw a 26 point shift leftward, SC-05 saw a 17 point shift, and PA-18, which voted for Trump by nearly 20 points, was an outright flip. We've seen nothing close to that so far from the Republicans and yet we're supposed to believe that they're going to have a 2010-style red wave election victory.

Yes, this is a very important point — were you never surprised by the magnitude of those shifts, esp. when comparing them with the November results?

Democrats won the HPV by ~7 points in November 2018, a swing of about 8 (House PV) or 5 (presidential PV) percentage points from 2016, whereas their overperformances in those special elections tended to be at least twice as large.

Just for the record, Democrats won the HPV by closer to 9 points (53.4-44.8; D+8.6) in 2018. Not that it necessarily disproves your assertion, but it's a fairly big difference.

I assume that figure is an estimate to account for the high number of uncontested Democratic House seats in 2018 - adjusting for this would undoubtedly put the final HPV margin below 8.6%.

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I still expect Democrats to lose the NY-19 special because Molinaro seems like too formidable of a challenger. That said, after MN-01, I think the possibility of an underwhelming win has gotten significantly higher, and I agree that keeping the race under R+3 (or a roughly 5-point swing from the presidential baseline) would be a decent result for Democrats.

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Think Molinaro wins by a lot and people here freak out.

Make sure you all have SL on ignore for tonight.

I thought the election was on the 23rd.

It is, along with NY-23. Tonight is just AK-AL.

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If it holds, the Sullivan county number is a concern, that was a Delgado county two years ago. But Ryan so far outperforming in all the counties he's carrying. Ryan did underperform Delgado in Schoharie but not by much.

Delgado's numbers are a poor point of comparison since he massively overperformed everywhere. It was always unlikely that Ryan would come close to that even if he were to win.

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I know it's difficult to extrapolate the greater significance of this result because of the quirks of the RCV system and the uniqueness of the candidates/Alaska's politics generally, but a 3% margin is a substantial win for Democrats.

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Not worth reading much if anything into special elections, but I do think Republicans losing Alaska for good is going to happen sooner rather than later. In my view, Blue Alaska is probably more likely than Blue Texas by the end of the decade.

I think Alaska is one of the states where the abortion issue coming into the forefront of national politics could have a pretty significant impact on its politics, given its heavily pro-choice population (and I say this as someone who thinks the effects of the Dobbs decision are somewhat overstated).

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https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1565131292169084928