There were 2 special elections of note on Tuesday night. First, Tom Suozzi won his race against Mazi Pilip with a margin just under what Biden won it in 2020. This was the race that all of the attention was on because it was expelled Congressman George Santos’s seat. The district has a varied election history, but it seemed to me that the early voting was pretty clear in predicting Suozzi’s win:
NY3 Special Election Eve Wrap Up Thread:
The early in person votes have all been cast now, with >60k votes ready to be counted. By party reg they are +10 Dem (ie, the share of early votes cast by reg Dems is 10 pts higher than that of GOPs). That's a 2.8 pt improvement on '22. https://t.co/blWc8SljcX
— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) February 12, 2024
Second there was a race for a seat in the Pennsylvania House which the Democratic candidate, Jim Prokopiak, won his race by 35.2%. The district was a Biden +10% district in 2020. That’s a 25 point increase in a state level race. If the Democrats had lost, the chamber would have become a 101-101 tie. I like this race because it’s a state level seat, and not a marquee race like NY-04, and it shows a significant increase in the vote for the Democratic candidate. Whether that came from mainly Democrats, or if it contained crossover voters remains to be seen.
I’m interested in this breakdown because part of the post-Dobbs electorate is motivated by the desire to vote out Republicans in what I thought was an almost-to-wholly partisan response until I saw this:
Wow: CNN spoke to a number of Republicans in NY’s 3rd congressional district who have previously voted for Trump and they said they voted for Democrat Tom Suozzi because “Republicans can’t govern.” That’s amazing. Americans are fed up with Republicans. pic.twitter.com/YOXDpY5QUq
— Harry Sisson (@harryjsisson) February 14, 2024
which now makes me think that competence is going to be a winning issue for Democrats in November.
We already know that there is a post-Dobbs mixed partisanship but mostly Democratic electorate motivated to restore access to abortion as a crucial element of women’s reproductive health care. Will the competence issue join women’s rights as a cross-party motivation for voters? We’ll see.
The Beatles have some advice:
The “number of Republicans” CNN talked to was two.
That’s larger than the number of Democrats papers like the NYT talk to when they want to take the pulse of America.