As you have probably heard by now, the Democratic Candidate won the special election for the NY Congressional Seat formely occupied by celebrity cheif, on-call astronaut, and the Nobel Prize winner for embellishments, George Santos. As such, I’m going to take a break from my usual agenda of Trump bashing (where’s that check Joyner?! Or wait, do I need to invoice Soros directly), to engage in a long honored OTB tradition of reminding everyone that just like the name says, special elections are special and we should be careful in drawing too many implications from any single one of them.
That said, there have been more of a few of them over the last few years and that allows us to look at some trends. Here are my armchair takes on the data and analysis I’ve seen so far (I expect everyone will share their takes in the comments and point out where I’m wrong):
- Pre-election polls suggested a closer race than it turned out to be.
The Democrat Tom Suozzi led his Republican opponent, Mazi Pilip, in the last two Emerson College Polls. However both times that lead was within the ~3.5 margin of error. So that was interpreted as the race being a dead heat. While the votes have not been completely counted, Suozzi has an 8 point margin (double the polls) as I write this.
This is one data point, but it suggests that we may find other polls, including State and National ones, may have similiar issues with under-representation.
- Democrats continue to outperform and pick up off-season electoral wins while national polls suggest they should be losing.
While one election should only be treated as a data point, when you look in aggregate you can start to see trends. As ABC News w”An analysis from FiveThirtyEight found that in 38 special elections held so far this year, Democrats have outperformed the partisan lean — or the relative liberal or conservative history — of the areas where the races were held by an average of 10%, both romping in parts of the country that typically support the party while cutting down on GOP margins in red cities and counties, too. (source)” In fact, in many of these elections Democrats are outperforming how they did in 2020.
These elections have been happening during a period that saw peak inflation and issues at the border that former President Donald Trump and other republicans hoped to run on in 2024 and yet the Democrats managed to prevail.
- Given Suozzi’s embrace of the issue, NY3 will be seen as a referendum on approaches to immigration.
A lot of pixels are being pushed this morning about Tom Suozzi leaning into immigration. I expect some Republicans will attempt to argue this is proof of how important a topic it is at the moment. This analysis misses that his opponent, Mazi Philip, ran as an immigration hawk. They differed on the bi-partisan border plan abandoned after months of negotiation at Trump’s order. The rationale for abandoning the decision was that any agreement would appear to be a “win” for Biden and that Trump plans to campaign on the border crisis.
Philip advanced the typical MAGA, maximalist, vaguely defined border policies (which, according to Steven Miller, are more or fewer concentration camps). Suozzi on the other hand, went all in on supporting the bill and the necessity to deal with the immigration issue: “If I was in Congress, I would absolutely support it. It’s what people want and people deserve action on this crisis, at this time.” For better or worse, Suozzi embraced some talking points usually reserved for Republicans to attack the party’s decision to make the perfect (and the political) the enemy of improvement: “[Souzzi] said Pilip would help block a border solution in Congress, paving the way for “more migrants coming to New York — and on top of that, they’re gonna have access to AR-15s.”“
Suppose Democrats see this as proof that they can successfully confront Republicans on immigration in a way that resonates with suburban and swing voters. In that case, they may remove one of Trump’s key wedge issues. Again, that’s a big if, but if I were Mitch McConnell, I’d have that on my mind as last night’s impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, United States Secretary of Homeland Security, again done at the order of Trump will set up a show trial that will present the Democrats with an opportunity to get said messaging out.
- As always, MAGA cannot fail; it can only be failed.
Former President Donald Trump was quick out of the gate to prove the saying, “Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.” Last night, he let his thoughts be known in a Truth Social post:
“Republicans just don’t learn, but maybe she was still a Democrat? I have an almost 99% Endorsement Success Rate in Primaries, and a very good number in the General Elections, as well, but just watched this very foolish woman, Mazi Melesa Pilip, running in a race where she didn’t endorse me and tried to “straddle the fence,” when she would have easily WON if she understood anything about MODERN DAY politics in America. MAGA, WHICH IS MOST OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, STAYED HOME – AND IT ALWAYS WILL, UNLESS IT IS TREATED WITH THE RESPECT THAT IT DESERVES. I STAYED OUT OF THE RACE, “I WANT TO BE LOVED!” GIVE US A REAL CANDIDATE IN THE DISTRICT FOR NOVEMBER. SUOZZI, I KNOW HIM WELL, CAN BE EASILY BEATEN!”
Despite advancing MAGA positions, Pilip was not MAGA enough to win. First, that’s not great news for many of the swing district Republicans in Congress (in particular, many who won on Long Island in 2022, helping swing control of the House). Either they go all in, apparently, or they won’t win.
Additionally, there are two specific parts of this reaction I want to call out. First is: “I have an almost 99% Endorsement Success Rate in Primaries, and a very good number in the General Elections.” First, note the un-Trump-like underselling of “a very good number.” This could suggest that Trump even understand that his success rate is primarily tied to endorsing a UUGE! amount of candidates, the majority of whom are incumbents in uncompetitive areas. When you look at endorsements in swing seats and more contested elections, Trump’s endorsement success rate often drops into the negatives. Either way, “very good” isn’t typical Trump branding.
Second, for as much critique there is about Democrats supposedly being ordered to vote for Biden no matter what, can we talk about how weird it is for the presumptive Republican candidate to say “I WANT TO BE LOVED!” after announcing that the reason he stayed out of the race was MAGA wasn’t respected. Or, maybe that’s just the new normal for the Republican party. If so it gets to an interesting inversion of the adage Bill Clinton used “Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line.”
If I were a Republican candidate who isn’t on the Trump-Love train, I’d be concerned about the need for total alignment with Trump–especially given the news that Trump’s daughter-in-law is running for RNC co-chair and promising that “Every single penny will go to the No. 1 and the only job of the RNC — that is elected Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.“
- This will negatively impact Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s overall power–both within and outside of the House.
The Republican Majority is down to three seats. Barring anything unforeseen, this should remain stable until the fall election. There are a few more open contests, including for former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s seat, but these are all in uncompetitive districts. In the House, Speaker Johnson has to keep his fractured caucus in line (ensuring that hard Trumpers don’t force something like a government shutdown and that moderates in Swing Districts don’t defect to the Democrats on key issues).
That internal weakness is going to weaken Johnson externally as well. Johnson, for the moment, seems to be ignoring this issue and is currently demanding that Biden deal directly with him on the border funding and aid issues. It’s hard to see, given the present circumstances, what leverage Johnson can bring when the Trump-killed compromise bill on border reform, which got the support of the conservative Border Patrol Union and delivered most of what Republicans were asking for a few months ago, is DOA in the House for not being extreme enough.
Further, the conflicts between Senate and House Republicans could explode into the open depending on how the House decides to prosecute Mayorkas–especially given that the result, regardless of what is presented by either side, will be his acquittal.
So those are my big takes from this. Granted I’m a Soros-funded shill (I kid) so YMMV. While this is a one-off, the overall trend, including the overperformance should create some concerns for the backers of Former President Trump. Granted, contextualizing his current (shrinking) lead in national polls with these results could suggest ticket splitting similiar to what happened in Georgia in 2022. Some of his supporters could split the ticket, still voting for him as President while choosing the Democrats for legislative rolls. Then again, let’s not forget that would require Trump to first outperform his election failures from 2020.
What are your takeaways?
