State Legislature Special Election Mega Thread

[Virginiá]

I'll put this up top for a while, so long as it is updated/used.

[Virginiá]

Dems got a 12-point swing in that seat.

Still, getting less than 35% is pretty pathetic.

Well, yes, but that is how it goes in some areas. It's not like Republicans don't have some districts where they completely bomb as well. What is more important is what margins Democrats have gotten there for, say, the past 3 cycles or so, and how the swing tonight compares.

[Virginiá]

So it appears that Democrats are not finished as some people would like to think.

Without taking this special into consideration, I must say I can't wait for the midterms to come already so people can stop acting like Democrats are just going to lose everything for the next million years. They are far from finished, and Trump is providing an excellent opportunity to make large gains, particularly at the state level.

[Virginiá]

So when is the election to replace that Artiles idiot?

September 26

[Virginiá]

I'm feeling real confident about the New Hampshire legislature flipping next year. If you applied a 9 point swing across the board in state Senate races, you'd get about 6 seats flipping R -> D, which is 3 more than necessary for Democrats to take control. 11 point swing and you get maybe 7 or 8 seats. By no means am I suggesting you would see a uniform swing, but Republicans really only barely held their ground in the state Senate in terms of their win margins, so it's  hard to see them holding on in 2018. Ditto for the state House.

[Virginiá]

Hopefully we can pick up legislative seats in the Kansas City and St Louis suburbs next year.

But I am tired of these near victories. 52 R to 48 D.

We'll probably get a big victory later this year, with Washington's special election which will determine control of the state Senate and thus whether or not Democrats have a trifecta. That means more than any of these legislative special elections. Plus, we've won a number of legislative specials recently. It's just the Congressional ones that were painfully close but ultimately lost. I'm pretty sure we'd be drinking champagne instead of sulking if Trump had tapped Congressmen like Mike Coffman or Barbara Comstock, who represent considerably more competitive districts than the deeply conservative ones in play so far this year.

[Virginiá]

The general for Washington  is in November not next month.

oopsies, corrected. I wasn't sure, which is why I put a (?) after month.

[Virginiá]

Which was the highest % a Democratic presidential nominee got in Fairfax County since 1936 by the way.

And the widest margin since 1916. I hadn't even noticed how significant Clinton's margin was in Fairfax until you brought this up. Republicans are seriously cratering in Virginia.

[Virginiá]

Usually, once Democrats lose control of a legislature in a state, it is very difficult if not impossible to pull themselves back up due to gerrymandering and loss of funding.  See Alabama, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, etc.

I wouldn't say that is indicative of all states Democrats control, just the ones where their majorities were already on tenuous ground. There was really just no way Democrats could hold on in Mississippi or Alabama, for instance. Their time was over in those states long before it actually manifested, but much like a person with savings can live temporarily with no income, they had entrenched power that kept them going until a steady stream of retirements, party switches, lost elections and finally Obama's tenure brought them down. States like Wisconsin and Michigan, though, those seem like states Democrats really should be much more competitive in. Hopefully the partisan gerrymandering SCOTUS case will help change their situation there.

[Virginiá]

http://www.unionleader.com/Dan-Tuohys-Granite-Status-Forrester-wants-to-Make-NH-RED-again-12292016

How's that working out for the NH GOP?

I like this:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Says the guy in the state that has backed a Democrat for president in 6 out of the past 7 presidential elections, a Democrat for Governor in 8 out of the past 12 gubernatorial elections, whose entire federal delegation is stacked with Democrats, and whose party's hold on the legislature was arguably lost back in 2006, and is now built mostly on gerrymandering and a succession of GOP-favorable election cycles.

[Virginiá]

Very impressive margin for the Democrat. Republicans hold on the New Hampshire legislature is looking incredibly in doubt.

I would be surprised if Republicans still held even one chamber by 2019. The state House is ripe for flipping and Democrats came close in enough state Senate seats to build a comfortable majority had they won them - which happened when both the presidential and senate races were razor thin wins. I can't imagine what would happen in a small-medium wave.

[Virginiá]

Oklahoma Rs need to get their act together asap...

I feel like the only thing they really need to worry about is losing the Governors office and/or maybe a significant number of row offices. Democrats are in such a hole in the legislature that even Republicans losing a bunch of state Senate special elections will probably not affect Republicans in any substantive way. I'm not completely sure what the win count is right now, but I think with the special elections this year, Democrats may only be at or near where they were pre-2016, which was already bad enough.

Although I guess in 2018 there could be substantial legislative losses for Republicans if it keeps up like this.

[Virginiá]

Didn't Trump carry almost every single legislative district in Oklahoma? If so that would mean Democrats usually depend on winning over Republicans. Tthe enthusiasm gap in special elections and split ticket voters would explain their recent wins.

[Virginiá]

All these races are irrelevant. The turnouts are so ridiculously low that you can get extreme flukes like this Massachusetts race and the Oklahoma races easily. If you're going to build your case for a wave, you'd be best off using generic ballot polls and the Virginia results.

That totally makes sense if you are referring to a handful of races, particularly in a state like Oklahoma, but taking all the special elections to date together as a whole, the average is somewhere around Democrats over-performing by 11 points (taken from 538). This is from dozens of legislative special elections, and the over-performance for those 4 Congressional specials was like +8 iirc. This is a complete reversal of the chronic under-performance under Obama. Combined with the Virginia results, it definitely does not paint a rosy picture for Republicans next year.

[Virginiá]

Very interesting. 20 point margin for R. I think Clinton lost this district by 10?

It must be that tax reform bump!

[Virginiá]

The guy that's only winning by 4 points in a Trump +50 district isn't a nobody... he's the state representative for parts of the district. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pody

What is happening.

I'm not sure. You should contact some of your friends on RRH and get back to us

[Virginiá]

I live in SoFlo and even here, in the bluest part of the state, local party organization basically doesn't exist. It's pretty frustrating.

On another note, does anyone know how to hide signatures on this site?

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?action=profile;u=14222;sa=theme

Check "Don't show users' signatures."

[Virginiá]

It’s early and while kinglear and limo liberal are annoying they are right that we don’t know what will happen but if this is the norm for all of 2018 we (could) see a even environment or a +1-2 either side which would be great for the GOP.

I think there was a Florida special election where Democrats under-performed pretty bad. Maybe also one in Mississippi? This is why the results of all of them are averaged together. Not every single special election will swing towards Democrats.

And for the record, these kinds of results that run counter to national trends happen to every party even when the result ends up being a wave. So don't break out the champagne anytime soon, Greedo.

[Virginiá]

I agree and yes you did make YUGE gains in the VA HD and picked up Alabama but the latter was because Moore was a muh candidate with lots of scandals. Oklahoma seems to be electing dems because Mary Fallin is a awful Governor. So in my view the  only yuge warning is VA-HD.

Actual election results between regularly scheduled federal general elections are not the only signs of a wave (in either direction). In addition, candidate recruitment, fundraising from small donors, enthusiasm (measured via polling), generic ballot polling, presidential approval polls all can help indicate signs of a wave. The last two especially, and historically have decently accurate in predicting vote shares in the upcoming election. The other things help but are best used in conjunction with actual approval/GCB polling.

You're doing yourself a disservice if the only markers you use to predict future elections are past election results.

[Virginiá]

St. Croix County is in. 4918 for Jarchow, 6156 for Schachtner.

Decimated.

It's over.

D+1

This seat was already up in 2016, so now Democrats only need +3 in November to flip the chamber? If so, do you think it's a better possibility now, given the favorable environment?

[Virginiá]

There's a special for SD-01, a district with comparable or slightly less R partisanship in NE Wisconsin (Green Bay area but not including Green Bay), before the 2018 GE also. That could make it significantly easier if the Democrats can win there, though it is also up in 2018 regardless.

The Obama numbers are actually a tad bit better in SD-01 than 10, so that's a plus I suppose. That seat wasn't up in 2016 though, so wouldn't they have to run for the special then immediately run again for November? That might be hard to win 2 times in a row.

[Virginiá]

Expect Democrats to lose all 4 races, in another example of just how the Missouri Democratic Party is becoming more and more of a thing of a past. My predictions:

Would they have been favored in any of these races more so before the Trump era?

[Virginiá]

So, let's look at things overall. In three of the four races tonight, things went as expected in Missouri - Republicans win, Democrats lose. The loss was wider than I expected in 39 and 129, and smaller than I expected in 144, but still the republicans won as expected. But in District 97, we saw a vastly different result, with a Democrat winning a very republican seat, a disastrously improbable event. Looking at the county results, it is apparent that the Jefferson County vote, which is way too democratic, was the victim of voter fraud. Democrats likely bused voters from other districts in just enough numbers to illegally flip this race. What this should do is mobilize every resident of Missouri to keep careful watch over their respective polling place and do all they can to stop future fraud. I encourage the republican candidate in HD-97 to pursue electoral fraud charges for the Jefferson County portion of the district in state court as soon as feasible.

What exactly are you basing that on? An election not going the way you predicted?

Why didn't they just "bus voters in" to all these districts and win them all?

[Virginiá]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

ahahahaha oh my god

How can someone write that kind of spin and not throw up a little in their mouth?

[Virginiá]

Krazen should be weeping, as his party is the victim of voter fraud. The fact that none of you have entered into any actual argument as to why we should trust that such an improbable result is a fairly achieved result is just more proof that fraud occurred.

It's more like the conspiracy theories you are slinging don't warrant much discussion, especially when you do not offer any proof or really any reason at all why you are thinking fraud in particular.