State Legislature Special Election Megathread v3

[Skill and Chance]

Since this somehow hasn't been mentioned here, I'll mention this:

Kentucky State House Minority Leader Rocky Adkins will resign from the State House, which he has served in since 1987, to take a role as a senior adviser for Governor-elect Andy Beshear.

This resignation will open up Adkins' Romney +17/Trump +39 seat for a special election. It should be noted that Beshear did carry this district 51-47, so Democratic ancestry is still fairly strong here in state elections.

I'm shocked Trump didn't carry it by more tbh

If there is any Trump +YUGE open seat that a Dem can still win, it's this one.

[Skill and Chance]

Why are you guys already throwing in towel? It’s just early vote

Dude this isn't even good trolling.

I’m genuinely curious

Early vote tells you jack about ED voting

Please stahp

Why are you acting like he’s trolling when he’s asking a legitimate question

Obviously the R is favored (Probably strongly)  based on the early vote but what’s the EV history in this district? Is it conclusive? Or is it still possibly a tight race?

If it doesn’t end up being a tight race then I kind of wonder why that is tbh. Does Gates have good connections within the district? I know a lot of outside D money went into this one.

In a normal election, it is possibly the deciding race for control of the state house in a statistical sense.  In the special, everyone involved seemed to be behaving as if the Republican was obviously going to win.  This is unsurprising though, because Texas Republicans have a long history of running up the score in special elections vs. GE numbers, similar to Georgia.  This was true even in 2018.

[Skill and Chance]

Major special election coming in May 18. Senate district 20 in PA has a vacancy and there will be a special to determine who gets the vacant seat.

This seat is based primarily in Lackawanna County (Scranton) and is also in Cartwright’s house district.
The Democratic incumbent won this seat in 2018 (D+8 year) by a 22% margin.

Although that number seems high, this is prime Trump voter territory and a seat Republicans will want to win. If the GOP does pull it off, it would signal doom for Democrats in their WWC holdings. On the other hand, if Democrats do better than expected (honestly any margin over 10% in my opinion) it will support the Atlas rhetoric about low propensity Trumpers.

LOL, Biden won this district by 9 and Clinton still won it by 4 (yeah, it actually trended left), it's clearly not '' Trump territory ''.

Moreover the district you are talking about is not SD20 but SD22.

Concerning the special election it is very unlikely that the GOP will be able to win it, a Biden+9 district in a such area is probably safe/likely D and if the GOP is able to put it in the single digit it would be alreday pretty impressive.

IDK though the Rust Belt is where we really need fresh data.

[Skill and Chance]

There was an election in LA to fill Troy Carter's Senate seat vacated when he defeated Karen Carter Peterson to win the LA 02 Congressional seat.  The winner was State Rep Gary Carter Jr who is not related to KCP but is Troy Carter's nephew.  It's a black majority district with a white part of Plaquemines Parish attached.  And that's the results, with white people winning Plaquemines and Carter Jr. the rest. 

https://voterportal.sos.la.gov/graphical

This means that LA state house 102 is open.  No word on how many Carters will run for that seat.

Interesting.  Some argument to be made between these results and the LA-02 special that D's are structurally stronger in the NOLA area vs. the recent past.

[Skill and Chance]

Still a loss and disappointing, but this was actually a better result for the Democrat than I thought it would be. For whatever reason Dems struggle in CT special elections, even happened during the Trump years.

"Ancestral" party infrastructure can really make a difference in special elections.  See also: Oklahoma Dems.

[Skill and Chance]

NH found an error in the recount that flipped a 20-some vote Republican lead to a 1 vote Democratic lead.  It is back to a 20-some vote Republican lead and this was just upheld in court.  With this, it appears R's have secured 201 seats and outright control of the chamber.

[Skill and Chance]

Luria endorsed Rouse today at his campaign launch, so I think it’s a safe bet he’s the Dem nominee.

This one will be really interesting to watch.  Because the new state senate map unwound a clearly gerrymandered seat that linked up several college towns in western VA, Dems will need to pick up at least one seat elsewhere to hold the chamber on the new maps.  However, there are 3-4 good opportunities to do this and the new median seat is left of the state.  The best 2 opportunities are in Richmond and western NOVA. 

This special election takes place on the old maps, which should favor the Dem pretty meaningfully.  However, if the Dem becomes the incumbent, they will have to win a true toss up seat in November 2023 to stay.

[Skill and Chance]

Luria endorsed Rouse today at his campaign launch, so I think it’s a safe bet he’s the Dem nominee.

This one will be really interesting to watch.  Because the new state senate map unwound a clearly gerrymandered seat that linked up several college towns in western VA, Dems will need to pick up at least one seat elsewhere to hold the chamber on the new maps.  However, there are 3-4 good opportunities to do this and the new median seat is left of the state.  The best 2 opportunities are in Richmond and western NOVA. 

This special election takes place on the old maps, which should favor the Dem pretty meaningfully.  However, if the Dem becomes the incumbent, they will have to win a true toss up seat in November 2023 to stay.

There is a new Biden + 20 Virginia Beach seat that I believe the Dem nominee said he is running in regardless.  The true tossup seat is the Delmarva peninsula seat that Lynwood Lewis holds.

Oh, interesting.  I figured they would force the new guy/gal into the most competitive seat in the area.

[Skill and Chance]

Luria endorsed Rouse today at his campaign launch, so I think it’s a safe bet he’s the Dem nominee.

This one will be really interesting to watch.  Because the new state senate map unwound a clearly gerrymandered seat that linked up several college towns in western VA, Dems will need to pick up at least one seat elsewhere to hold the chamber on the new maps.  However, there are 3-4 good opportunities to do this and the new median seat is left of the state.  The best 2 opportunities are in Richmond and western NOVA. 

This special election takes place on the old maps, which should favor the Dem pretty meaningfully.  However, if the Dem becomes the incumbent, they will have to win a true toss up seat in November 2023 to stay.

There is a new Biden + 20 Virginia Beach seat that I believe the Dem nominee said he is running in regardless.  The true tossup seat is the Delmarva peninsula seat that Lynwood Lewis holds.

The special is taking place under the old lines, which was Biden +10. The general will be in a Biden +20 seat.

Did Biden win the new version of the (currently Dem-held) Eastern Shore seat?  If so, by how much?  Do we also have Youngkin numbers for it?

Update: I can see that it was a Youngkin blowout with 57.7%.  Overall, there were 20 Yougkin seats and 20 McAuliffe seats in the VA state senate.  There are exactly 21 seats where Youngkin did worse than his statewide margin (R+2).  2 of the Youngkin seats have Dem incumbents.  I believe this Virginia Beach CD is the only McAuliffe seat that (formerly) had an R incumbent.   

In the 2022 congressional elections, the Eastern Shore district was 54% R.   Democratic candidates won 24 seats, winning the same 21 by more than their statewide margin (D+3).

Based on this, I do expect Dems to most likely hold the chamber. 

Biden obviously won a couple more seats with the double digit statewide margin.   

[Skill and Chance]

Interesting, Kiggans only just barely won this district in 2019 and actually lost it in last year's House race

https://twitter.com/vpapupdates/status/1612625559351164928

VPAP is also being seriously misleading here. Completely ignoring 2020 and 2018.

And also, I thought Hillary won here in 2016. 

She did win it by 0.3%.

Is this a result of the issue where VA didn't allocate absentees by precinct until literally last year?

[Skill and Chance]

Winning by 0.9% in a Youngkin +4.3 seat would verbatim be consistent with holding at 22D on the new map, with the potential 23rd D seat (Youngkin +5.2, also in Hampton Roads) going to a recount.  The 21st D seat on the new map is meaningfully easier than this one at Youngkin +0.6 and it's also in high turnout outer NOVA.

[Skill and Chance]

What's great for Rouse is that he has a perfect safe D seat to run in for the November election that has no incumbent.   SD-22 is Biden+20 and covers a good portion of the old SD-7.   He'll have that seat all decade easily.

I think he challenges Kiggans for the CD in 2024.

Not sure how wise that would be given he underperformed Luria's loss at the CD level meaningfully tonight.

[Skill and Chance]

This is great because Republicans+Morrissey no longer have the trifecta in VA.

Morrissey is an independent, sure, but he's representing a deep-blue seat and usually votes with Democrats.

Anyway, I think the VA-7 result is fine for national Republicans. It represents a small swing right from the 2022 results (Luria won here by 3 points, Rouse by just 1) in a place that's trending Democratic really fast (Clinton+1, Biden+10). By swing from 2020 this suggests a national environment of R+4, and by swing from 2022 it's R+5. (Also, definitely a point of evidence against Democrats usually having a turnout advantage in specials. OTOH, the fair reaction would be that traditional majority parties often have turnout advantages in specials, so maybe this result could coexist with Democrats usually having a turnout advantage in special elections).

It's kind of a bad result for Virginia Republicans, though; as mentioned above this is a seat they had held for decades, and their victory here was one of a few bright spots in 2017. They probably don't have a route to a state Senate majority without this seat, or ones much like it.

While I agree with your points overall, it should be noted that VA Dems have consistently performed poorly in specials south of the DC area.  Historically, it's been similar to the R turnout machine in TX specials.  There was a special in the Hampton Roads senate district adjacent to this one in 2014 and the Dem only won an Obama +5-10 seat by <10 votes!

I would describe recent Dem results in VA as "good enough to win statewide by 2012-16 margins."  Looks like Biden's 2020 #'s really were a one-off, though.

[Skill and Chance]

The results tonight suggest that if the economy improves this year and next, and Biden doesn't have any major scandals or foreign policy disasters, the Republicans don't have much of a path to reclaiming the trifecta.

The most likely outcome in such a scenario is a reelected Biden, Speaker Jeffries, and McConnell controlling the Senate calendar once again (unless Sherrod Brown pulls off a miracle).

This result 1. wasn't all that amazing for Dems (their candidate did 2% worse than Luria in 2022) and more importantly 2. shouldn't be extrapolated outside of VA.

[Skill and Chance]

There are two other special elections going on in VA tonight -- one in a safe D area, and one in a safe R -- how are they doing?

I think the Dem in Fairfax is doing worse than McAuliffe and the Republican in Appalachia is also underperforming Trump by a decent amount.

lol nothing makes sense anymore

Nah, it's just mean reversion in specials most likely.   There's also this weird thing where VA Dems have always done better in the state senate.  They were only ever below 19/40 seats for one cycle (2003-07), while they got consistently blown out in the HoD for a couple decades. 

[Skill and Chance]

Democrats focused heavily on abortion for this campaign. It's an absolute killer for the GOP, my god.

Biden+10 --> Luria+3 --> D+1?

More accurately. Youngkin +10 -> D+1 because it's ridiculous to compare high turnout federal elections to low turnout specials especially when the democrat vote is depedant on low turnout black communities.

This seat was Youngkin +4.

[Skill and Chance]

Democrats focused heavily on abortion for this campaign. It's an absolute killer for the GOP, my god.

Biden+10 --> Luria+3 --> D+1?

More accurately. Youngkin +10 -> D+1 because it's ridiculous to compare high turnout federal elections to low turnout specials especially when the democrat vote is depedant on low turnout black communities.

This seat was Youngkin +4.

Also, reminder that the seat may not be as blue as Biden+10 for 2020, cause of VAs inability at the time to match mail voters to precincts.

That's a good point.  Also, CD-07 is almost surely bluer than it looks and CD-10 redder than it looks because of this same issue in Prince William.

[Skill and Chance]

Glad to see we are overinterpreting low turnout special election margins already. The only thing that really matters is Dems flipped a seat and now have a much safer margin in the VA Sen. Too bad the Dem had to be a former Packer though .

Well, yes, this makes a big difference because it puts them out of lose control because one person gets sick (or accepts a Youngkin appointment) range.

[Skill and Chance]

A few more ballots were counted, extending Rouse's lead about an extra 0.5%

Rouse (D) 19,784 — 50.72%
Adams (R) 19,187 — 49.19%

Interesting.  As of 2022, VA allows same day voter registration, but they treat the ballots as provisional until they can verify them a few days later.  As of 2020, VA also allows absentees postmarked by election day to count if they arrive by the Friday  after.  In this case, these ballots had a meaningful impact.  In 2020, the ED provisional vote would skew R and the latest-arriving mail-ins would be less D than average.  It looks like we have reverted to the pre-COVID pattern of these votes being very D. 

[Skill and Chance]

The results tonight suggest that if the economy improves this year and next, and Biden doesn't have any major scandals or foreign policy disasters, the Republicans don't have much of a path to reclaiming the trifecta.

The most likely outcome in such a scenario is a reelected Biden, Speaker Jeffries, and McConnell controlling the Senate calendar once again (unless Sherrod Brown pulls off a miracle).

And there goes the scandal point.

Trump has literally the same scandal though so this feels different.  Either no big deal or it makes it more likely we get totally different nominees from both sides.

[Skill and Chance]

We finally got a special election in a diverse urbanized district with a lot of people who are neither white nor black.  This result in NYC seems broadly consistent with R's outright winning the Hispanic and Asian vote in 2024? 


The question I have here is by how much would the R have won by if the Orthodox Jewish community had voted as R as they did in 2020?  Or as R as they did in 2022?  And how would that compare with the actual Biden/Trump or Hochul/Zeldin results?  That should probably be the benchmark unless we for some reason anticipate the leaders of this community would endorse Biden or congressional Dems in 2024.

[Skill and Chance]

Interesting how most of the press continues to be silent or completely not acknowledge these continued special election results that show Dems overperforming. Something is not clicking here with actual results and polling.

I think it's more that, except in certain high-income suburbs or some racially polarized rural areas, Republicans now have a base that turns out less than Democrats' base.  In low turnout special elections in most areas, Democrats are overperforming.

It's not a coincidence that the one major special election since 2016 where Republicans overperformed was the highest profile one, GA-6 in 2017 (and also in the sort of area where turnout dynamics could still favor Republicans in off cycles).

Will be interesting to see if we have actually reached the point where lower turnout helps Dems in MS and VA.   I think we're already there in LA and KY.

[Skill and Chance]

This is why I’m not stressing about Biden’s poll numbers yet. There’s time for that next year.

Single issue Trump people don't vote in special elections.  Like the difference between presidential and non-presidential turnout during Obama's presidency, but with the parties reversed.