State Legislature Special Election Mega Thread

[KingSweden]

Much better night for Ds than I expected

[KingSweden]

So on average Dems are seeing a 14 point swing in races or so, yes?

[KingSweden]

We're winning suburban Oklahoma City and Tulsa districts now. Great news.

And it only took the sexual harassment of an assistant and a child prostitution charge. The OK GOP are just lovely people, aren't they?

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhklahoma where the pervs come sweeping down the plain.

*raucous applause*

[KingSweden]

Any predictions for WA-SD45 tonight?

[KingSweden]

Any predictions for WA-SD45 tonight?

Dhringa clears 60%.

That would be quite something.

[KingSweden]

Not as bad as I was expecting in SD-45. @kingsweden Do you think it's because a lot of these voters want a split legislature?

Possibly. The Englund campaign is basically zeroed in on car tabs and income tax fearmongering, and nothing else. Still think Dhingra has the advantage with three more months of Trump to further sink the WAGOP

[KingSweden]

Not as bad as I was expecting in SD-45. @kingsweden Do you think it's because a lot of these voters want a split legislature?

Well, the Republican candidate ran a localized campaign from my view, and to be blunt, she is Asian and attractive in a district with a large Asian population, so I think she's overperforming how a Generic R would do.

Jinyoung Englund is better looking than most candidates, male or female, which doesn't hurt

[KingSweden]

GOP also went all-out in the last two weeks against Dhingra.

[KingSweden]

Counting is done for today, but will continue throughout the week. Update on the uncalled races:

Spokane Superior Court - Judge Position 6County Results & Map
Candidate   Vote   Vote %
Jocelyn Cook
12,295   25.26%
J. Scott Miller
11,404   23.43%
Tony Hazel
24,970   51.31% Projected to make first runoff slot
Total Votes (not including write-ins)   48,669   

Legislative District 48 - State SenatorCounty Results & Map
Candidate   Vote   Vote %
Richard Knierim(Prefers Independent Dem. Party)
2,284   15.98%
Patty Kuderer(Prefers Democratic Party)
8,628   60.36% Projected to make first runoff slot
Michelle Darnell(Prefers Libertarian Party)
3,382   23.66%

For the following race, while it is clear that the latter two candidates will make the runoff, the gap between them is small enough that it is unclear who will have the distinction of finishing first in the jungle. Watch the late ballots. :

Legislative District 45 - State SenatorCounty Results & Map
Candidate   Vote   Vote %
Parker Harris(States No Party Preference)
1,620   6.86%
Jinyoung Lee Englund(Prefers Republican Party)
10,052   42.59%
Manka Dhingra(Prefers Democratic Party)
11,928   50.54%
Total Votes (not including write-ins)   23,600   

Late ballots are unlikely to favor Englund

GOP also went all-out in the last two weeks against Dhingra.

Ah, I just read that on Twitter. Not too bad of an underperformance, all things considered then. Romney did about 12% better than Trump here, so I guess it was foolish of me to assume the results would bleed downballot that fast.

FL SD-40 should be a real barn burner though, I think, after watching these results. Strong anti-Trump sentiment vs. strong local Republican machine.

This is really the kind of district with many of the quintessential Romney voters who voted for Clinton or didn't vote for President/voted Johnson. My conservative but anti-Trump parents live here, I can't imagine they won't vote Englund in Nov, almost 90% because of the belief that Dems will ram through an income tax immediately upon regaining power

[KingSweden]

So I guess Parker Harris is a left-Indy and not a Libertariam like I thought. In that case, most of his support is likely to shift to Dhingra, giving her a further leg up. (I'm now expecting this fall to look about 54-46 in Dhingra's advantage)

[KingSweden]

Keys-Gamarra won 64-33
Clinton won 64-29

Clinton had a larger margin, but Keys-Gamarra matched her %.

Keys-Gamarra had strong support from local Dems (Wexton, Boysko, Murphy, etc.), and she actually ran ahead of Hillary in some incredibly affluent, traditionally Republican areas near Oakton, which was her home turf. I'm hesitant to say this is a good data point to predict the gubernatorial race though, and that's simply because this race was a nonpartisan election.

It's very clear that Democratic anger/enthusiasm is extremely high in Fairfax, however.

Bodes well for HoD races, IMO, but who knows how Northam-Gillespie shakes out. I imagine Gillespie has better residual strength in NoVA than Generic R would (especially with Trump in the WH) but there could be strong headwinds even for him

[KingSweden]

We should have made this man DNC chair

[KingSweden]

In case anyone was wondering:

This is misleading, though, because New Hampshire has way more seats in its legislature than any other state to begin with.

What is sad and pathetic is that these are only the TOP state losses.  Obama wiped out Democrats the way Eisenhower wiped out Republicans in 1958.  It took Republicans until 1994 to even be competitive again at the state and local level.

The flips of southern legislatures was, long term, an inevitability that preceded Obama. Tennessee, Oklahoma and Mississippi were already close in 2008.

1958 was a generational wipeout, rather than structural issues coming home to roost a la 2010

[KingSweden]

Damn that's two big upsets for Dems today. And more amazingly FLDP didn't cock it up completely

[KingSweden]

DailyKos is gonna have another field day tomorrow

DKE is actually really good. Better than RRH at least, which has been overrrun with Bannonites recently.

Just never ever venture outside of DKE. Ever.

[KingSweden]

Apparently Rockingham HD 4 is the 4th most GOP seat in the entire state of New Hampshire.

Really? At only 59% Trump?

NH's just not that polarized. Part of why they've had comically huge swings in the state legislature at many of the elections of the past decade.

If there is one constant in politics, it's that NH will have wild swings.

[KingSweden]

Why was the Dem performance so poor in the Florida House race yesterday? Was it because Diaz had his machine to pull out voters for the Senate race in his old district?

Probably. I also think the Dem candidate was mediocre, with most of her political experience being in Venezuela (where she was in Congress I believe)

[KingSweden]

What a disappointing performance. Utterly disgusted with the MS democratic party.

I mean, the 2015 results were 73-27 so it's not horrible.

10 point swing

[KingSweden]

Great roundup Ebsy!

[KingSweden]

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?

Depends on the specific seats this fall. Arch probably has more insight

[KingSweden]

Could Republicans really lose WOW? It's talk-radio country!

I doubt they lose WOW, but there’s a risk they get poor margins and raw vote totals out of it, which would be fatal

[KingSweden]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Romney won SD-10 by 6 points, so the Democrat winning it by 11 points is actually a 17 point swing away from the Republicans versus the 2012 numbers.  Not sure how SD-10 voted in Obama-McCain '08, but this may constitute an unprecedented swing for the district, which appears to be a traditionally Republican district by modern standards and not JUST a Trumpy district (though with plenty of Trumpy voters).

My concern is that the GOP is now losing both the new Trump voters and the traditional GOP voters that have voted Republican since at least 2000.  If that's the case, that along with the swing towards the Democrats in urban and suburban areas seems like 400-electoral-vote loss territory in 2020.  It seems like losing voters without replacing them with other types of voters is a poor strategy to say the least.

See this is good analysis, the kind that often lacks here so that we can have freakouts, insults, hot takes and memes. Thank you for writing it, and welcome to Atlas!

[KingSweden]

Hey Limo if I come up with a snarky signature for you does your offer still stand?

[KingSweden]

Yep. Seems like the Republican won only one precinct and none of the towns. Trump and Toomey won quite a few in 2016.

Isn’t she a city council member from that district and won by line 4 votes? Dunno how much more you can read into that

[KingSweden]

These MO races are probably better used as a barometer for what kind of swings were seeing across the board