Nov.05

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

The Red Team Is Feeling Blue

The people came, they saw, and they voted. Veni, vidi... suffragium dedi. Ok, it was only in some states. And some people didn't actually go anywhere, other than the mailbox. But still...

Let's start with the two governor's races. First up, by virtue of a coin we just flipped, will be New Jersey. About a week ago, we wrote "Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) appears to be an unusually weak candidate." This was based on the polling of the race, which was very close (1-5 points), and on the fact that a few skeletons from her closet re-emerged during the campaign. Quite a few readers took deep offense to this. We're not sure why; it was an offhand comment, and surely folks don't think that three people who live in California, and one who lives in the Netherlands, have strong personal feelings about the next governor of New Jersey, right? Unless Bruce Springsteen runs, that is.

In any event, the polls got this race pretty wrong. With 95% of the vote counted, Sherrill is thrashing Jack Ciattarelli (R), 56.2% to 43.2%. That's a margin of 13 points. The various aggregators all had her average lead between 3.3 and 5.7 points, and there was no individual poll in the last two months that had her winning by 13. The only plausible way the pollsters could all be wrong by the same basic amount is that they guessed what the electorate would look like, and they guessed wrong. They likely had Democratic turnout up a bit and Republican turnout down a bit, and for at least one of those things, if not both, it was "a lot" not "a bit."

Lots of people are going to try to read the tea leaves here, and reach conclusions for what this all means for the next couple of elections. For now, we'll give some raw numbers, which readers can ponder for themselves. Our assessment will appear below, after we've also given the Virginia numbers. Just to make sure everyone is clear, "Next House" and "Next Senate" refer to the next midterm election, which is always 1 year after a New Jersey/Virginia gubernatorial election. "Next President" refers to the next presidential election, which is always 3 years after a New Jersey/Virginia gubernatorial election.

The only other big thing on the New Jersey ballot yesterday was the state Assembly (the members of the state Senate were not up). As of midnight PT, 49 seats had been called for the Democrats and 19 for the Republicans, meaning the blue team will keep the trifecta in the Garden State. If the Democrats can pick up four or more of the 22 seats that have not yet been called, then they will extend their current 52-28 majority in the lower chamber.

It is certainly possible that, with the support shown by Democratic voters on Tuesday, Sherrill will try to join the parade of gerrymanderers once she takes office (not unlike Gov. Wes Moore, D-MD, did yesterday). If so, it's a steep hill to climb. Sherrill will take office in mid-January, and it would take a California-style rewrite of the state Constitution. There's also a waiting period of 20 days built into state law before such a thing can even be considered, and then there would have to be time to schedule and run a special election. Add it up, and even if Sherrill decides to try it, 2026 is a long shot because there just isn't time. Certainly, 2028 is possible, if the Democrats want to take a shot. The three districts currently occupied by Republicans are R+14, R+5 and EVEN, so picking up two seats is very doable.

Moving on to Virginia, Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) dispatched her opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R-VA) by a margin similar to the one in New Jersey—57.5% to 42.3%, or 15.2 points (with 96.5% reporting). Here, the polls were a bit closer to the bullseye; the aggregators had Spanberger's average margin between 9.2% and 10.7%. Still, that means that the average miss was about 5.5%, which is outside the margin of error, and means that the pollsters here also whiffed a bit. Again, they presumably underestimated Democratic turnout, or overestimated Republican turnout, or both.

Here are the numbers we listed above, except this time with the Virginia gubernatorial results from the 21st century. Virginia is generally considered to be more predictive than New Jersey, first because it is closer to Washington, DC, and second because its rule against governors serving consecutive terms means that incumbency is not affecting the results:

Now that readers have had a chance to turn over the historical numbers from Virginia and New Jersey in their heads, we'll start with three observations:

1. We do not believe that results from these two states tell us too much about future presidential results. It's easy to gloss over a period of 3 years when creating a table or a spreadsheet, but it just doesn't work that way in reality.
   
   
2. We believe the biggest factor in the composition of the Senate is the map of whichever 33 (or so) seats happen to be up that year, a midterm-cycle map that is predominantly dictated by a presidential cycle 6 years previous. It is possible that results in these two off-year states give some insight into the Senate, but we don't see how you can isolate that from the effects of the map.
   
   
3. When it comes to predictive qualities, the 2002 election has to be tossed out. That one was super wonky due to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

If one accepts all of these statements as correct, that leaves us with House races outside of the 9/11 aftermath. And for those, the gubernatorial results do look to be reasonably predictive. If the Democrats do well in a gubernatorial race (say, winning by 5 points or more), they tend to do well in the next year's House elections. If the Democrats win by less than 5 in either of the two gubernatorial races, or if they lose, then they tend to do poorly in the next year's House elections. As a reminder, both Democratic gubernatorial candidates won by well more than 5 points last night.

Elsewhere in Virginia, it was a Democratic sweep. In fact, one could call it a Democratic wave. Ghazala Hashmi will take over as lieutenant governor; she also won by double digits, outperforming Republican John Reid by 11.4 points, 55.6% to 44.2%. Hashmi will become the first person of Asian descent, and the first Muslim, to hold statewide office in Virginia. This is not your grandparents' Confederacy, folks.

And in the AG race, it turns out that AG-elect Jay Jones (D) didn't actually have that much reason to be nervous. The race was tight early in the evening, primarily because the votes from white, rural areas were counted first. However, Jones eventually pulled away, defeating incumbent Republican Jason Miyares by 6.6 points, 53.1% to 46.5%. Not quite as big a margin as for Jones' two new colleagues, but still a comfortable margin.

The really blue-wavy part of the Virginia election, even more so than the laughers for governor and lieutenant governor, was the elections for the legislature. As in New Jersey, the state Senate was not up, but the House of Delegates was. And there, the GOP really took it in the teeth. The Democrats flipped 13 seats (with one still left to be called), giving them a majority of at least 64-35.

So, the blue team will have the trifecta in the Old Dominion State. And there, gerrymandering games will definitely be played. It doesn't actually matter which party the governor is from, because they don't get a say. However, it is necessary for rules that would allow the change to be approved by two consecutive sessions of the legislature. Virginia Democrats already took care of the first part of that, and when the new session begins in January, they will do it again. Currently, five of the state's eleven representatives are Republicans; their districts are R+22, R+12, R+6, R+3 and EVEN. So, it should be a simple matter to set the Democrats up to win three of those seats without taking too much of a risk.

And now, the New York mayoral election, where a whole lot of people tried desperately to salvage the campaign and the career of "independent" candidate Andrew Cuomo. That includes Cuomo himself, of course, along with current mayor Eric Adams, Donald Trump, a bunch of New York City fat-cats, and a whole bunch of New York Republicans (and some non-New York Republicans) who portrayed Zohran Mamdani as basically the next coming of Satan, except worse. None of it worked; Mamdani won the election comfortably, taking 50.4% of the vote to 41.6% for Cuomo and 7.1% for Republican Curtis Sliwa. Obviously, that means that even if all the Sliwa voters had migrated to Cuomo (something they were clearly not interested in actually doing), it wouldn't have changed the outcome.

It certainly appears that Mamdani will instantly become the highest-profile mayor of the city since Rudy Giuliani. For progressive and progressive-leaning Democrats, he will become a major standard-bearer, alongside another lefty New Yorker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). For some Jewish Democrats, he will be viewed as the embodiment of left-wing antisemitism (fairly or not). For many on the right, he will become the face of the Democratic Party, a symbol of the alleged excesses of the left. It is probable that city council members in Little Rock, and state representatives in Tennessee, and wannabe members of the U.S. House from Ohio and wannabe U.S. Senators from Georgia will build a portion of their campaigns around opposition to Mamdani, despite the fact that the mayor of New York has no impact on places outside of New York. And maybe this will work. On one hand, Republicans had some success doing this with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). On the other hand, it's worked much less well with AOC. And obviously, if Mamdani performs well, it will be at least a little harder to use him to tar and feather the other members of the blue team.

There was one other interesting mayoral election, which we haven't written about, but we really should have. In Minneapolis, incumbent mayor Jacob Frey, a moderate liberal, is reasonably popular. He is running for reelection, and is opposed by a whole bunch of candidates, three of which formed a de facto alliance meant to leverage the city's ranked-choice system. State Senator Omar Fateh is a Democratic socialist, pastor DeWayne Davis is a centrist liberal, and entrepreneur Jazz Hampton is about halfway between those two, and each has been campaigning on the notion that I should be your #1 choice, and the other two should be choices #2 and #3. As of last night, with 95%+ of the votes counted, Frey had 41.7%, Fateh had 31.6%, Davis had 13.9% and Hampton had 10.4%. Frey is pretty close to the promised land, but once the city works through the ranked choices, it is at least possible that one of the other Democrats (presumably Fateh) could overtake him.

There were six other major cities, besides New York and Minneapolis, that held mayoral elections yesterday, and it was a sweep for the Democrats (or, in some cases, the Democrats who had to pretend to be nonpartisan). In Cincinnati, incumbent Aftab Pureval (NP, but really D) won by 54.4 points. In Atlanta, incumbent Andre Dickens (NP, but really D) won by 78.9 points. In Detroit, Mary Sheffield (NP, but really D) won by 54.4 points. In Pittsburgh, Corey O'Connor (D) won by 75 points. In Buffalo, Sean Ryan (D) won by 49.3 points. And in Jersey City, the top five finishers were all Democrats pretending to be nonpartisan. The top two, Councilman James Solomon (29%) and former governor Jim McGreevey (25.4%), will advance to a runoff. Obviously, large cities tend to skew very Democratic, but even allowing for that, these are some very large margins.

There were a few other notable elections for office that took place yesterday. In Pennsylvania, as expected, all three judges up for retention got the exact same result. Clearly, as we noted, people were not actually voting on the judges' performance, they were voting for or against the (D) next to their names. That thrice-repeated result was yet another laugher, with each judge being retained 61% to 39%. In Minnesota, as expected, one of the vacant state Senate seats was won by a Democrat-Farmer-Laborer, the other by a Republican. In both cases, the result was 62% for the winner, 32% for the loser. This means the DFL will retain control of the state Senate by one seat (the party also has the governorship; the state House is split evenly between D's and R's). Finally, in Texas, Democrats Christian Menefee (29.4%) and Amanda Edwards (25.7%) advanced to a runoff election that will fill TX-18, the very blue seat that was left open by the death of Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX). The date of the runoff has yet to be set, but you can bet Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) will push it back as far as he can.

As to the ballot propositions, the biggie, namely California's Prop. 50, passed in a rout. With 70.6% reporting, it's leading 63.8% to 36.2%. That's 27.6 points, and depending on how the remaining ballots break (and they are disproportionately from blue counties), it could end up closer to 30 points. So, California will probably send half a dozen or so Republican members of the House into retirement, partly blunting the effects of the shenanigans in Texas. In fact, because California has much more margin for error than Texas, it could be that California ends up expanding its Democratic delegation, and... so does Texas. With the narrow margins the Texans have left themselves, and with a possible backlash against the party in power in Washington, the circumstances may be ripe for a Lone Star gerrymander to turn into a Lone Star dummymander.

This is obviously a huge, huge win for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Even if you think the guy's a phony and a political chameleon (and many people think both things about him), Democratic voters in 2028 are going to be looking for a candidate who will stand up to the Republicans and who will be able to get things done. What happened yesterday is clear-cut proof-of-concept for both things.

At the same time, the overwhelming win for Prop. 50 is a big poke in the eye for Donald Trump. He tried to get involved in the effort to defeat it, and eventually had the good sense to realize he was doing more harm than good, given how unpopular he is in the Golden State. Still, his pulling back didn't matter much. As we have written, the "Yes on Prop. 50" campaign morphed into the "Stick it to Donald Trump" campaign. And if there is any doubt on that point, CBS did an exit poll where they asked "Yes on 50" voters to identify the reasons they voted yes. Here are the results (obviously, respondents could vote for more than one):

To Oppose Donald Trump: 75%
To Oppose National Republicans: 70%
To Support National Democrats: 62%
To Support Gavin Newsom: 41%

It really couldn't be much clearer than that.

A quick rundown of what happened with the other propositions and initiatives we discussed yesterday:

• Maine, Question 1: By a huge margin, 63.9% to 36.1%, the Down Easters decided not to make it harder to vote. Good for you, Maine!
  
  
• Maine, Question 2: By a similar margin, 63.2% to 36.8%, Maine judges were given the power to take away guns from individuals believed to be dangerous. This one will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, one of these days.
  
  
• Texas, Prop. 3: Texans decided to make it harder for judges to grant bail, 62%-38%.
  
  
• Texas, Prop. 15: Texans also gave parents more power to "make decisions concerning the child's upbringing," 70% to 30%. This is going to make life harder for teachers and school administrators.
  
  
• Texas, Prop. 16: Texans put their (boot-covered) feet down, and said that undocumented immigrants cannot vote in their state, 72% to 28%. This was already illegal, of course.
  
  
• Colorado, Prop. MM: Coloradans voted, 58.1% to 41.9%, to keep giving free lunches to all of the state's schoolkids, with people making over $300,000 paying more taxes (technically, getting fewer deductions) in order to cover the costs.
  
  
• Olympia, Washington, Prop. 1: The effort to raise the minimum wage there to $20/hour and to adopt a Worker's Bill of Rights, failed 55% to 45%. Fewer than 7,000 people voted, by the way.
  
  
• New York City, Props. 2, 3 and 4: 57%/58% of NYC residents decided they like the idea of making it easier for developers to build more housing. Given that those same pinkos just elected Zohran Mamdani, expect to see Stalinkas and Khrushchevkas lining the streets of New York in short order.
  
  
• New York City, Prop. 6: On the other hand, folks in the Big Apple apparently like to be the star of the show in off years, because 53% of them voted against moving municipal elections to even years.

And that's the skinny. Democrats nationwide have to be thrilled with these results; today, they'll be upgrading their iced brown sugar oatmilk shaken espressos from demi to tall, or maybe they'll just have a second mimosa with their lunch. The Party may be pulling terrible approval ratings right now, but however unpopular they might be, Donald Trump and the Republicans are clearly much more unpopular. Not only did the blue team pull off a near sweep (excepting a state Senate seat in Minnesota and a few not-too-important ballot props), but their wins were convincing. That is going to inform a lot of political maneuvering in the next 6-12 months. (Z)