Special state legislative elections thread (see OP for results/upcoming races)

[Linus Van Pelt]

If a Negro can get 47% in Marion county, any local white Democrat should have a cakewalk.

Marion actually swung to Obama, despite being a 89% white rural county - he beat Kerry by 1 percentage point, or around 200 raw votes.

[Linus Van Pelt]

Actually, I'm curious to know what the local party strength is like in the Utica district. It seems like it should be one that Republicans would do well in (Obama only won it 50-49), but the prior incumbent had little problem holding the seat over the past decade.

Edit: More registered Democrats than Republicans. Kind of odd for upstate New York.

Not that odd for an economic basket case area like Utica. 

I have to wonder if the R-C candidate can win AD 144.

71-21-8.
It was described as safe Democratic in some writeup I found... wonder what happened here in 2010? Was the guy on the Conservative line actually a renegade Democrat?

Yes, quite literally: the Conservative candidate was a veteran Buffalo city councillor who ran in the Democratic primary and flipped to the Conservative nomination after losing that. Furthermore, this district is entirely contained within the Senate district where ex-Democrat Mark Grisanti beat corrupt Democrat Antoine Thompson. So I'm not sure Paladino's really the issue.