Morning Digest: "Three states will hold half a dozen elections to fill vacant seats in their legislatures… None of these seats is likely to flip."
This is the striking reality in today’s hyper-polarized America. Gerrymandering and redistricting priorities, as well as population and demographic shifts, have greatly reduced the number of competitive races. The DownBallot’s excellent Special Elections Tracker, which is well worth bookmarking, reveals additional data:
– 23 special elections so far this year. (Six more tonight!)
– 16.4% Dem overperformance rel. to 2024 Presidential
– 11.7% Dem overperformance rel. to 2024 Presidential
– Modest GOP overperformance in only two races (DE SD-05 (2%) and CT SD-21 (6%))
DOUBLE-DIGIT DEMOCRATIC OVERPERFORMANCE, yes, and yet we have flipped only TWO (2!) legislative seats. In two additional races, Dems came within 3% and 5% respectively of flipping (Iowa HD-100, CT HD-113).
Even if they win that, I don't believe that it means that they'll win any statewide office in 2026 but it would be good to atleast see the narrative change.
Speaking of NJ-Gov, The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell and Cook Political Report's Amy Walter did a focus group of Dem voters about who they were going to vote Democratic. Surprisingly, the entire focus group was down on Mikie Sherrill for various reasons that weren't at all ideological. (They were also universally down on Cory Booker for seemingly not walking the talk after his 24 hour long talking filibuster.)
One female member of the focus group who said she liked Sherrill, but she scared by Kamala and Hillary's loses to Trump into believing that misogyny is priced into the electorate for example. Two members of the focus group cited Sherrill taking money from a PAC with a connection to SpaceX as something they didn't like.
The Focus Group they did is well worth your time since its a read into what rank and file Democrats are feeling right now.
I personally believe Sherrill wins the primary, but I wouldn't be surprised if she somehow lost the primary to someone else.
I'm not a fan of The Bulwark. Tim Miller comes off as cynical, smug and dismissive, and I don't know how Longwell conducts these focus groups without wanting to rip the MAGA participants a new one.
The Focus Group podcast is consistently interesting, though. Obviously the goal of these group discussions isn't to correct the participants on all of their wrong beliefs.
In my experience there are two main flavors of "Never Trumpers": Those who think the only problem with the party is Trump, and once he's gone, all will be well; and those who understand that the rot extends much, much deeper than the guy at the top. Longwell seems to be in the latter category and Miller the former, for the most part.
I've never found much of Walter's analysis to be particularly interesting or insightful.
Amy Walter is awful. Horrible analysis. Seems not to have knowledge of political trends or facts from more than a cycle ago. And despite this criticism towards some pundits, she really *is* "everything is bad for Dems, it's never bad for Republicans." Charlie Cook should never have passed the torch to her
That's what came through in the Bulwark focus group. Participants liked Baraka for standing up to Trump, as they saw it, but had reservations about how he would do in the general.
But then centrist voters would defect to the Republican. The problem with the "progressive" argument that they lose no votes is that if that were true, Larry Hogan never becomes Governor of Maryland. Swing voters DO in fact exist.
No. Sherrill is a Navy veteran and serves in Congress. She was actually elected to office in her own right. Kathleen never won a race on her own. She lost her race for Congress back in 1986. In Maryland, the Lieutenant Governor is elected jointly with the Governor so she never won a race on her own.
There's definitely truth to this. But I think it's important to keep in mind the cycles where Hogan and others like him first won.
Hogan won in 2014. Baker won in 2014. Scott won in 2016. Christie won in 2009. Youngkin won in 2021.
All cycles where democrats were varying from doing poorly (2016) to absolutely getting wrecked in elections (2014). Also I do not believe any of their opponents were perceived as particularly progressive. Not Hogan's opponent in 2014, nor Baker's. Maybe Scott's in Vermont was?
For a few years now I've been of the view that democrats are best served by letting our candidates avoid being labelled with either the moderate or progressive ideological label. Remove that shortcut for people to get worked up over and it's easier for them to be liked by the slice of the electorate that is potentially willing to vote for them.
Plenty of elected dems avoid either the progressive or moderate labels today.
Does either label come to mind immediately when you think of Ossoff, Duckworth, or Kim in the senate? Whitmer as governor?
I don't know that any of them are broadly considered to fall into either category by the average democrat following politics.
The biggest danger is getting hit with both labels from the wrong side. That's a big struggle HRC had in 2016: moderates thought of her as too far left, and progressives thought of her as too moderate.
Yeah, I can't think of the last time being a woman was a net negative in a statewide race (a friend of mine who is a *sane* NC GOP lobbyist said that a woman's first name was good for a 1-2% bump).
That said, almost certain it will be Sherrill or Fulop, and very likely Sherrill.
(Sharing here because The DownBallot is a data-driven community.)
In a study set to be released later today, the group behind the letter-writing effort, the nonpartisan Vote Forward, found that personal messages sent to more than 5 million occasional voters deemed at risk of staying home last fall had no effect on turnout.
PS. Along with many others, I spent a lot of time writing GOTV cards. While I don’t regret a moment of that, I may have to look for better ways to contribute in 2026 and special elections before that.
Sadly this isn't a surprise. Too many left leaning people of all types are simply shallow individuals who insist and insist and insist on treating their vote as a valentine. Not as a chess move, an obligation, or a duty. For them, the very idea of voting against someone instead of for someone is absurd and unthinkable. This is why Republicans have an edge. To them, the very idea of Democrats being in charge of ANYTHING is unacceptable. Too many on the left simply do not feel that way with regards to Republicans being in charge.
Hey stop with the left-bashing. I and my family are very left and we wrote numerous postcards and did numerous GOTV for our State Senator. I’m getting really sick of the left being blamed for everything — if someone who isn’t left loses an election, the left is told they should have voted. If someone who is left loses an election, the left is told they are “too far-left” or a centrist or moderate should have been run.
If we’re going to be a big tent party, we have to show it. That may mean compromising with the left sometimes, just as the left (or at least some of the left) have been willing to compromise with the center. Compromise is a two-way street.
For the trillionth time, by "the left" I mean most Democratic voters in general. Not just "progressives" who are NOT the base of the Democratic Party BTW.
Ah, got it. Misread your comment, apologies. I do agree that far too few Dems are willing to make sacrifices — like, I don’t agree with Beth Davidson in my district (NY-17) but I’m prepared to vote for her if she is the nominee.
(Though I’ll note that while we aren’t the base, we’re still a part of the party regardless.)
I would trust "progressives" more if more of them would accept that the ideology of the majority of Americans is closer to that of Virginia's than that of Vermont's. If the latter were true, we'd see more elected officials in the mold of Bernie Sanders than we do.
I mean, I know some of the ideas I support aren’t popular with a lot of Americans. I even support some ideas that are quite far out from most Dems — I’m a strong supporter of copyright reform for example.
My stance is that support for ideas can change over time. Maybe people don’t support something now, but in the future they might — and vice versa. See the LGBT debate for example, and its ebbs and flows.
Here’s a question I have for you — what do you think progressives should do, if they were to accept the Virginia vs. Vermont comparison you made? Does it become a messaging question? A policy question? A candidate recruitment question? I’ve always believed baby steps are still better than none, so I’m willing to play the long game myself. I’m just curious to know what you think, since you don’t seem to be a progressive yourself.
(I apologize if I’m not clear, I’m battling a nasty cold right now.)
They should keep in mind that American politics is bottom up, rather than top down. That ultimately voters are the deciders. If they want to push their preferred policies, voters have to ultimately accept them, and that in many cases it might take longer than they (or frankly I) would like. That if their candidates lose, it's not because "rigged" or "conspiracy" it's because their preferred candidate's ideas are simply not popular with the electorate as a whole.
I agree about 2016 not 2020. Rubio and Cruz didn't drop out in 2016. Even Warren was running as a progressive but at that point Biden was the best candidate to run the general election in my view so I don't think they made a mistake. Iff Bernie became president, he would have made the same mistakes on the border and the same post COVID and the russo-ukrainian supply shocks and inflation around the world would have hit him hard which would have ended the Progressive movement. Progressives should be thankful for Biden taking most of the blame. But if Trump won, the MAGA movement would have been finished too.
There are other top down elements too. Retiring reps and Senators often collude with local party machines, activist groups and DC to stop messy primaries, promote their preferred successor and coalesce behind a candidate in terms of support, endorsements and fundraising which is true for all wings of the party.
Single issue loaded Super PACs flood the airwaves with negative attack ads which are not related at all to their single issue. The electorate is also malleable and some polls found that Hillary Clinton's debates and her campaign rhetoric contributed to what is now termed "the Great Awokening" by liberalizing attitudes of half of America to many issues, especially systematic racism while Trump's did the opposite on issues like Immigration and not privatizing or "touching" Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security compared to before the 2016 primaries.
That's really a great question. For me, it's as simple as ditching the purity tests when it comes to candidates. You duke it out in the primary for your preferred candidate and then after a nominee is chosen, you go all in for that person because continuous wins are how you achieve long term policy goals and nearly every democrat is better than nearly every republican on progressive issues. I'm an early 30s attorney in the middle of the democratic party (not far left, not moderate) and the "purity tests" my law school friends hold democrats to to "earn" their votes are impossible. I don't live in an area with many competitive races (STL suburbs in Illinois), but, personally, I will almost always vote for the candidate who gives us the best chance of winning a seat who will support 90% of democratic priorities.
It's situational and issue-dependent. Just as the Republican figure to emerge from the ashes of their party's 2012 nadir was absolutely nothing like what anybody in the politics game expected, I think it's just as likely to be true about the next Democratic figure to emerge from the current abyss.
As Americans face the closure of thousands of hospitals because of our broken health care system and the atomic bomb of AI transforming every aspect of their lives in the next few years, I'm not convinced they'll conclude that Abigail Spanberger or Terry McAuliffe is their best hope for salvation. Maybe they will if 2028 turns out to be a 1996 or 2000-style low-stakes election. Seems unlikely.
Progressives are simultaneously the base of the Democratic party and have hijacked it but they also are not. Polls found that most self described socialists, progressives and very liberal voters voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic party while libertarians did so for the GOP. Socialists deny this because they want to project that they will not vote unless the party is more leftist and Centrists also deny this because they want to sideline the entire base in the name of Socialists and the "far left" because they won't vote anyway. Also, the centrist Welcomefest repeatedly referred to Liberals and Progressives as the base of the party who need to be sidelined. I would not call myself a progressive but I am a liberal who can vote for the right "moderate" or "progressive" candidate.
Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the efficacy of this particular form of outreach. And it’s worth noting that the data we have suggests that no voters in 2024 were more likely to favor Trump than Harris, and by a larger gap than among people who did vote. I love to be frustrated with Democratic voters too, but pathologizing half the political spectrum isn’t helpful.
I have been impatiently waiting for Field Team 6 to release its state-by-state data of their voter registration efforts. I am hoping that will tell a different story!
(The article in The Atlantic is paywalled. Feel free to add a gift link if you can.)
That's interesting and odd at the same time. I swear I read in past cycles that they found GOTV cards were one of the most effective ways of increasing turnout.
I wonder if this is a trend-fitting effect? If the cycle is one where people are more open to voting for democrats, the cards will be more effective. If it is a cycle where they are not, the cards will have little to no effect.
In 2016 and 2024 it seems there was a lot of people that were meh on our nominees for various reasons. In 2020 that might have been the case as well, but the hate for Trump overwhelmed that.
If the above idea is true, it'd result in years like 2008 or 2012 being years where GOTV cards did have an effect, but years like 2016 being ones where the effect is muted.
We had been doing them for a long time, as far back as in 2004 during John Kerry’s presidential campaign. Letter writing efforts particularly targeted states like OH which were key states Kerry needed to win. Naturally, he did not win OH as well as the presidency.
I get the impression that letter writing efforts are better done early on in a primary campaign to raise awareness about a political candidate. Letters to the editor on the other hand don’t really make an impact period.
This does not come as a surprise to those of us who have worked in field on political campaigns. The evidence around postcards has always been very flimsy compared to other forms of voter outreach. The races that have found it to have an impact are almost all lower-turnout races.
The gold standard for swaying voters is still face-to-face conversations. Postcards are fine for volunteers who cant walk between houses or talk on the phone, or are very far from any competitive district, but they also have a tendency to divert volunteers away from better forms of voter contact, which is why postcard drives are so rarely run by campaigns themselves. This means that the groups doing postcards are often from officially nonpartisan groups that don’t even mention specific candidates in their scripts because they’re not legally allowed to endorse. Among those who do endorse, the groups often don’t have access to the same level of voter targeting data as the campaigns and just kind of send the letters out to dem-leaning areas with the idea that it should have a generally positive impact. Of course, given what we know from studies it’s not clear if even a postcard campaign operating on really good data would have much impact on something like a presidential election. My recommendation for people who want to write postcards is to find some obscure down-ballot race where voters might not be familiar with the candidates and your message will carry more value.
My opinion: Postcards and letters are great for special elections, maybe midterms. Not so much for presidential elections when even infrequent and unlikely voters tend to show up. The lower the turnout the bigger the impact these would have.
In New Jersey's unusual system, each Assembly district sends two representatives to the state house. I wonder how often Assembly districts split the vote, sending one Democrat and one Republican each to the Assembly. If the answer is almost never, might the two-Assembly member system be redundant? Why not keep the size of the Assembly the same but split each district in half?
It reminds me of other states that have nested house and senate districts (such as Minnesota which for example has Senate district 1, comprised of House districts 1A and 1B). NJ seems to just have a different voting method. Minnesota has a couple of those districts where the senator is of a different party than the house members, or the house members come from different parties. I imagine NJ would also have some of those districts
Maryland does much the same, with each Senate district also electing three House members. Some of the districts are split into sub districts for the House, so some voters only have one or two representatives there.
Only 8 of the 47 Senate districts have at least one House member of the opposite party of the Senator's, and all of those have House subdistricts.
there are plenty of split assembly delegations, there's two currently in Jersey rn, and on average there are usually two or three split districts with one r and one d
I wonder if Dems could win one of the Assembly seats back in 2 this year. 1 is gone for good I think, but 2 is a Harris district. The problem is that Atlantic City turnout plummets in off years and the Republicans that tend to keep getting elected there are economically moderate making them hard to beat.
As others have said, there are two split districts right now resulting from the 2023 election, but there weren’t any in the 2017, 2019, or 2021. There were two in 2015, including the race I was an intern on where we unseated a gop incumbent by 78 votes.
I think the two seat districts are largely unnecessary. (Especially because when state senate is up then you’re actually looking at three seats all with the exact same overlapping constituency.) I’d much prefer the nested seat model.
Normally in NJ if you do get a split assembly district it’s a case where the race is so close that all four candidates are essentially tied. In 2023 in Ld8 the margin between the top candidate and the bottom candidate was 0.5%. (1st and 4th were gop, w/ the two dems sandwiched in between and picking up one seat.)
I think the split districts used to be slightly more common when there was more local media and it was easier for candidates to build their own brands. Republican Chris Brown had a strong local brand in his Atlantic County district and in 2015 he led his gop running-mate by a whopping 3%, but that that was a decade ago now.
The one huge exception is Avi Schnall in District 30. The district is very conservative but dominated by the ultra orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood and they vote as a block. In ‘23 they decided that they wanted one of their own in the Assembly, so Avi Schnall ran as a dem so he could be in the assembly majority. The Lakewood Jewish community backed Schnall and one of the gop incumbents. That incumbent got 39.9% of the vote, Schnall got 31.4%, and then the other incumbent only got 19.3%. Schnall’s Democratic running mate got 9.4%. So that one is a weird case where there were huge differences between members of the same party, but I’ve never seen anything like that anywhere else.
I wonder what seats they’re worried about. Seems like they’ve already got a pretty good map except for maybe screwing around with South TX now that it’s become more politically advantageous for the GOP.
TX-23 seems like a sleeper seat if the GOP gets too cocky with reconfiguring the RGV. Any short term backlash in the border counties combined with continued slippage in the SATX suburbs could be a recipe for disaster if they try to shift some of those red areas to TX-28
The best they can do in the actual metro areas, aside from a redraw of TX-29, is make TX-07 and TX-32 back into swing seats. Not really possible to make them solid R without endangering the others.
Yeah, I spose I read “prevent Democratic gains” as prevent Dems winning seats in TX. They mean overall for the House and they could absolutely screw over some Dems in TX. Which, is probably why the GOP delegation was meeting and needing sign-off bc they could end up with some ugly ass districts. TX-7 and TX-32 could change drastically.
My concern if I was a GOP Rep would be my district changing and now I face a primary challenge. I doubt they’ll dummymander themselves out of a GOP seat but they could easily dummymander themselves into a primary challenge.
Targeting Escobar is a pipedream. You may be able to make some tweaks to 28 and 34 by taking some from 27 and 21 (which have GOP votes to spare), but precinct level-wise, I'm not sure if you gain too much. Obviously, you've got 15 in between them and MDLC has Bobby Pulido coming so I doubt they want to take too much red turf from there to move into 28 or 34. If you get any hispanic reversion, you could lose all 3 if you get cute with 15.
Democrats need to start doing this in states they control, the gloves should have already been off in time for 2024 elections. It’s absolutely beyond ridiculous that every time voters want to say no to Republican autocracy rule, the party can just add more seats in more states whenever they want to in order to always hold power.
Florida gave the party their House Majority after they redrew out Democrats. Then it was North Carolina. Without the redraws, Democrats hold the House right now and provide a much needed blockade against Trump. There are always more Democratic seats to eliminate in red states. Any person with eyeballs can see this happening and continuing to happen over and over again in state after state, yet nothing is ever done about it to actually counteract it, instead there’s concern or outrage, but no action taken.
This is yet another example of the current leadership of the Democratic party being asleep at the wheel and not realizing or not willing to fight the depths of illegality the GOP will stoop to in order to control America. There is no line they won’t cross, so we must be ready and willing to also cross those lines or else they will always win because we are unwilling to do what it takes to win while they are.
The one in North Carolina was preventable. Had we had decent state party leadership going into 2022, the state Supreme Court wouldn't have flipped to 5-2 Republican control (and Ted Budd wouldn't have won the Senate race). And as soon as that MAGA SCONC majority was seated, they promptly revisited the rulings issued by the outgoing progressive majority on gerrymandering and voter ID only weeks prior. They happily let state Rs reimpose their photo ID law for in person and mail voting, gleefully redraw the state Congressional districts from 7 D - 7 R to 10 R - 4 D as well as even more gerrymandered state legislative districts.
If Dems flip back the SCONC in 2028 or 2030, I want SERIOUS payback. Not only should the court re-revisit the partisan ruling on voter ID and gerrymandering, but the (hopefully former) judges who enabled Jefferson Griffin's attempt to end democracy in the state need to be removed and charged. And forget redrawing the lines to be fair, I want a 60% Democratic gerrymander. I want Phil Berger and former state House leader Tim Moore demoted and seethe as a minority as Democrats throw out and undo every harmful thing they pushed onto NC residents.
The dumbest thing Dems did in NC was not taking Republicans up on their independent redistricting constitutional amendment offer in 2006. Dems should have known that they wouldn’t be able to hold both houses of the legislature forever in a red leaning state.
I just read that bill and while it’s not perfect, it’s a lot better than the Republican dominated legislature drawing it now. I would’ve added more guardrails, as in not having any elected officials draw the maps and have a special master recommended by two former state Supreme Court judges if they can’t agree on the maps.
I think this is the second dumbest thing they did. The dumbest thing they did was not do anything in the 2010 lame duck session after Republicans won control of the legislature. In that lame duck session, NC Democrats could've either created a redistricting commission or given the Governor veto power in redistricting. They chose to do neither, thinking Republicans would play nice once they had control of the legislature.
They should have done something in early 2010 when polls showed them losing both houses of the legislature. Instead they basically just sat and twiddled their thumbs (common story across the nation for Dems in 2010).
Changing redistricting or giving Gov veto power over it would require a constitutional amendment passing 3/5 in both Houses and approved by voters. 2010 Dems had exact 30 seats in the state Senate, but never had 72 seats in the House.
When in mid 2000 that polls showing Republicans were going to get a shellacking? Realistically Which Dem leaders would sign on to give your opponents more power?
Or in 2010, when obviously the Rs would take a majority? Which R state Reps would sign on the initial proposal of a non-partisan commission then?
Otherwise with the requirement that legislative district lines never cross auto-grouped county clusters, you can never gerrymander a 3/5 D majority in both Houses.
Aside from redraws, you can blame state parties for sucking. The Florida redraws can be traced back to Gillum losing in 2018 and the NC ones to Dems screwing up the court races in 20/22.
But you can also chalk it up to poor performances in the actual house races. Dems held up well in 2022 across the country but them tanking in CA and NY cost them the house. Then they seriously clawed back ground there in 2024 only for them to sh*t the bed in PA (and to a lesser extent MI/CO).
The current leadership is powerless to do anything about this, and the problem the last time the Democrats had a trifecta was not the leadership but the necessity to depend on Manchin and Sinema, who wouldn't vote for electoral reform over a filibuster.
I don't think Sinema would have voted for anything, but I think there's a small chance that Manchin could have been brought around to electoral reform if it could be packaged right. Something that convinced him it was aimed at moving more towards consensus building.
The problem is he'd never ever vote to end the filibuster to make that vote matter.
The issue is there are either independent redistricting commissions, or our delegation is already maxed out in states democrats control. California, Colorado, Washington, and New Jersey all have commissions. Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island already have all dem house delegations, and Maryland is 7-1 while Oregon is 5-1. Maybe Maine could be redrawn to shore up ME-2, but that wouldn't actually change the composition of the delegation (although it would make the seat safer). Illinois also already has a 14-3 map, which maybe could be made better? Really the only state that could do something substantial is New York, which could very easily make the current 19-7 map stronger. But that would likely be countered by Republican-led redistricting taking out urban districts in Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Florida. Other states like Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi I think are less likely because those are majority black districts, but still possible
Maryland could've been made 8-0, but the Dem legislature chose not to because of parochial interests. Several people here have made 8-0 maps of Maryland that would've satisfied the interests of state Democrats.
I don't remember all of them offhand, but I do know that Dutch Ruppersberger wanted Aberdeen Proving Ground in his district. There was also resistance to splitting the Eastern Shore and having districts go from the Shore to the DC suburbs, especially if they only used water contiguity and not roadway contiguity.
Tbf to MD Dems, they did finally wise up and attempt a (relatively) clean 7D-1Tossup-0R configuration this decade but the courts intervened. Thankfully Anne Arundel, and now Frederick, are now so far gone against the GOP that it didn't risk MD-06, nor did it make MD-03 a reach opportunity.
Just because a state has an independent commission, doesn’t mean the Democratic trifecta can’t pass new laws or undo it. Who cares if voters put it in place? Do you know how many times Republicans have ignored the will of the voters on ballot measures? What consequences have come from it for them? Zero. The media and voters just shrug and keep electing the same people.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. Being afraid or unwilling to do what it takes to give the party an advantage. Just because something is the way it is now and is detrimental to the party, doesn’t mean it can’t be changed! Be willing to do what it takes to win, period. If Democrats redrew California and no other states, even with the Florida and North Carolina redraws, they’d still hold the House right now.
If there were less elected Republicans in California, the party would have less money to spend in the swing seats and states. This is only 1 state example. We are giving them the same damn courtesy they would never give us and why? Having blue states with independent commissions doesn’t make sense! It is time to completely throw out the rule book and any norms that existed in order to play the game how the GOP plays it, or else we’re destined to always lose, period.
How do you think voters would react to Democrats overturning fair districts measures passed by referendum? I don't think the reaction would be the same for Democrats as for Republicans. Remember, the Democratic Party is the party of good governance, fairness and democracy. The Republican Party is the party of fuck all of you.
They would shrug and keep voting for Democrats by the time the next election comes 2 years later. This is the risk aversion that has hamstrung the party. If you don’t think this is the most likely outcome, you don’t understand how short voters memories are.
The Dobbs effect almost went away in an election just 6 months after the ruling ended abortion for the first time in half a century. Anything that happens, voters will get used to the new normal, however that looks like because it doesn’t effect THEM. The only time they rebel against the current status quo is when it hurts them. They won’t remember 2 years later that some Republicans lost their seats.
"The Democratic Party is the party of good governance, fairness and democracy. The Republican Party is the party of fuck all of you."
Which is exactly why the Democratic Party gets a LOT less leeway when it comes to bad governance than the Republican Party does. When Democrats mess up, it undermines the party's central tenet. When Republicans mess up, it reinforces the party's central tenet.
Georgia's probs as maxed out as possible aside from messing with GA-02, but they likely want to avoid the chance of that endangering GA-01/GA-12 as a result.
I was reading the above article from the Times while catching up with the latest goings-on in the Big Brother House...er, House of Representatives, and Mike Flood's atrocious defence reminded me to ask. With there being several big opportunities in Nebraska next year (Bacon-watch in NE-02, Osborn gearing up for Senate Run part deux, Trump likely pissing off gov workers in Lincoln *and* farmers in the rest of the state) does it seem like NE-01 is going to be on the board sooner than later? And if not, are there any potential candidates who could make Mike Flood a former representative by Jan 2027?
Relevant fun fact: out of the 50 states, 5 CDs, and 1 DC that participate in the Electoral College, NE-01 was the only voting entity to swing away from DJT in 2024 compared to 2020.
He did enter the Presidential race essentially trying to sabotage Biden in 2020 (who in hindsight, didn't really need the establishments help at all-once he won South Carolina, he was practically guaranteed the 2020 Presidential nomination anyways-and he was never really in danger of losing South Carolina).
90% of the base would reject the money based on Bloomberg being a rich white Jewish man (basically, racism/anti-semitism/anti-billionaireism all rolled into to one package).
We hated rich people less in 2018, Israel wasn't as big an issue, so anti-Semites in our party could be ignored more easily, and racial issues weren't as relevant as they were two years later-there are large portions of people in our party who will not vote for a white person-even if there is literally no other choice that there weren't before George Floyd.
GOP State Senator Ileana Garcia, who is the co-founder of the pro-Trump group Latinas for Trump, is turning against the Trump Administration's agenda on deportations.
Garcia's anger is particularly directed at Stephen Miller, who is essentially the architect of the hard line immigration agenda.
A Florida Republican has broken from the ranks to slam President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans as "inhumane."
State Senator Ileana Garcia, a co-founder of the pro-Trump group Latinas for Trump, took to social media to voice her opposition, directly criticizing both the policy and Stephen Miller, the architect behind the Trump administration's hardline immigration measures.
"This is not what we voted for," Garcia wrote in a post on X."I have always supported Trump, through thick and thin. However, this is unacceptable and inhumane."
Would be hilarious if it wasn't attached to so much human suffering. This is exactly what she voted for. She might be able to delude herself into thinking otherwise, but this was his promised outcome if he won.
Everyone loves authoritarianism until it targets them and no one is left to defend them. They got what they voted for, now they get to deal with it. And I’d bet just like last time these people will still vote for Republicans again. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Anyone with a brain knew this was what was going to happen.
You know, if her disagreement with this is actually real it just makes me wonder sooooo hard, what was she thinking? Nothing happening right now is some kind of huge shock. Much worse than this was actually possible (just wait, who knows). I know, people are idiots, etc.
More than double Fulop’s number, with Baraka narrowly in third. I’d imagine these figures hold - it would take a lot for either of them to make up that margin
Doesn't an indictment require a grand jury? There's something really fishy about Habba getting a grand jury in deep-blue Newark to indict McIvery in just three weeks.
The standard, at least in a New York state for local county grab juries, is much lower than for conviction. Basically, you just need to believe there is reasonable cause to believe a crime occured and that the accused committed it. You also only need a majority of the jury to agree, not everyone. I don't think any prosecutor would bring it before a grand jury unless they were sure that an indictment was coming down. We heard about 9-11 cases, a light load. There were never more than 3-4 or so votes against indictment on any one charge, as far as I can remember, and most were unanimous. We would have needed 10 to vote no not to indict.
Fulop's religion (which implies that he is pro-Israel) essentially makes him a non-starter if she wants to keep the Democratic base from going third party.
No, his being Jewish at all implies that he supports Israel's right to exist, which apparently is anathema to most of our base (not necessarily anyone here-I think we can all tell the difference between Likud and Israel proper, but most of the base can't or doesn't care).
It's the same reason Shapiro is a non-starter on a national ticket.
No, but I don't think simply being Jewish is an issue in _New Jersey_, and if it is, antisemitism is much more ascendant throughout the U.S. than I think it is.
FEW DEM. FLIPS DESPITE GREAT OVERPERFORMANCE
Morning Digest: "Three states will hold half a dozen elections to fill vacant seats in their legislatures… None of these seats is likely to flip."
This is the striking reality in today’s hyper-polarized America. Gerrymandering and redistricting priorities, as well as population and demographic shifts, have greatly reduced the number of competitive races. The DownBallot’s excellent Special Elections Tracker, which is well worth bookmarking, reveals additional data:
– 23 special elections so far this year. (Six more tonight!)
– 16.4% Dem overperformance rel. to 2024 Presidential
– 11.7% Dem overperformance rel. to 2024 Presidential
– Modest GOP overperformance in only two races (DE SD-05 (2%) and CT SD-21 (6%))
DOUBLE-DIGIT DEMOCRATIC OVERPERFORMANCE, yes, and yet we have flipped only TWO (2!) legislative seats. In two additional races, Dems came within 3% and 5% respectively of flipping (Iowa HD-100, CT HD-113).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JGk1r1VXnxBrAIVHz1C5HTB5jxCO6Zw4QNPivdhyWHw/edit?gid=415249345#gid=415249345
I suppose those two Florida seats where Trump won 59% of the vote might be competitive. It will be interesting to see in any event.
Yeah if Dems got the same overperformance they got in FL-01 and FL-06, they would win those two state legislative specials.
Even if they win that, I don't believe that it means that they'll win any statewide office in 2026 but it would be good to atleast see the narrative change.
Speaking of NJ-Gov, The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell and Cook Political Report's Amy Walter did a focus group of Dem voters about who they were going to vote Democratic. Surprisingly, the entire focus group was down on Mikie Sherrill for various reasons that weren't at all ideological. (They were also universally down on Cory Booker for seemingly not walking the talk after his 24 hour long talking filibuster.)
One female member of the focus group who said she liked Sherrill, but she scared by Kamala and Hillary's loses to Trump into believing that misogyny is priced into the electorate for example. Two members of the focus group cited Sherrill taking money from a PAC with a connection to SpaceX as something they didn't like.
The Focus Group they did is well worth your time since its a read into what rank and file Democrats are feeling right now.
I personally believe Sherrill wins the primary, but I wouldn't be surprised if she somehow lost the primary to someone else.
https://youtu.be/Im6o1BcCrXc?si=1rROqQfmg854ZtpZ
I'm not a fan of The Bulwark. Tim Miller comes off as cynical, smug and dismissive, and I don't know how Longwell conducts these focus groups without wanting to rip the MAGA participants a new one.
The Focus Group podcast is consistently interesting, though. Obviously the goal of these group discussions isn't to correct the participants on all of their wrong beliefs.
Yeah. I mean, if Longwell can detect MAGA people souring on FDJT (or stop voting for Republicans), good on her. We need a massive blue wave next year.
But these Never Trumpers frustrate me sometimes.
In my experience there are two main flavors of "Never Trumpers": Those who think the only problem with the party is Trump, and once he's gone, all will be well; and those who understand that the rot extends much, much deeper than the guy at the top. Longwell seems to be in the latter category and Miller the former, for the most part.
I've never found much of Walter's analysis to be particularly interesting or insightful.
Amy Walter is awful. Horrible analysis. Seems not to have knowledge of political trends or facts from more than a cycle ago. And despite this criticism towards some pundits, she really *is* "everything is bad for Dems, it's never bad for Republicans." Charlie Cook should never have passed the torch to her
I was just about to post about this. Really interesting discussion and it sounded like the SpaceX thing has really hurt Sherrill.
I would never bet against a woman facing a bunch of men in a Democratic primary, though.
Whom do you think wins the primary instead? Steve Sweeney?
No clue at all. I was just surprised to hear the focus groups be so negative about her.
I think people are curious if Baraka has risen since polling stopped. I think Sherrill pulls it off but there's uncertainty there.
I worry about Baraka's general election chances. New Jerseyans like the idea of "moderate Republican" Governors too much.
That's what came through in the Bulwark focus group. Participants liked Baraka for standing up to Trump, as they saw it, but had reservations about how he would do in the general.
A very valid concern...
True then again Baraka might pull leftists out to vote more than Sherrill
But then centrist voters would defect to the Republican. The problem with the "progressive" argument that they lose no votes is that if that were true, Larry Hogan never becomes Governor of Maryland. Swing voters DO in fact exist.
Wouldn't Sherrill be more a Kennedy Townsend type?
No. Sherrill is a Navy veteran and serves in Congress. She was actually elected to office in her own right. Kathleen never won a race on her own. She lost her race for Congress back in 1986. In Maryland, the Lieutenant Governor is elected jointly with the Governor so she never won a race on her own.
There's definitely truth to this. But I think it's important to keep in mind the cycles where Hogan and others like him first won.
Hogan won in 2014. Baker won in 2014. Scott won in 2016. Christie won in 2009. Youngkin won in 2021.
All cycles where democrats were varying from doing poorly (2016) to absolutely getting wrecked in elections (2014). Also I do not believe any of their opponents were perceived as particularly progressive. Not Hogan's opponent in 2014, nor Baker's. Maybe Scott's in Vermont was?
For a few years now I've been of the view that democrats are best served by letting our candidates avoid being labelled with either the moderate or progressive ideological label. Remove that shortcut for people to get worked up over and it's easier for them to be liked by the slice of the electorate that is potentially willing to vote for them.
But how could they avoid labeling?
Plenty of elected dems avoid either the progressive or moderate labels today.
Does either label come to mind immediately when you think of Ossoff, Duckworth, or Kim in the senate? Whitmer as governor?
I don't know that any of them are broadly considered to fall into either category by the average democrat following politics.
The biggest danger is getting hit with both labels from the wrong side. That's a big struggle HRC had in 2016: moderates thought of her as too far left, and progressives thought of her as too moderate.
If there are Democrats that avoid labeling, how do they do that?
I'd be at least modestly surprised. New Jersey elected Christie Whitman twice as governor. This isn't the entire United States.
Yeah, I can't think of the last time being a woman was a net negative in a statewide race (a friend of mine who is a *sane* NC GOP lobbyist said that a woman's first name was good for a 1-2% bump).
That said, almost certain it will be Sherrill or Fulop, and very likely Sherrill.
DEPRESSING NEWS
(Sharing here because The DownBallot is a data-driven community.)
In a study set to be released later today, the group behind the letter-writing effort, the nonpartisan Vote Forward, found that personal messages sent to more than 5 million occasional voters deemed at risk of staying home last fall had no effect on turnout.
https://politicalwire.com/2025/06/10/letter-writing-campaigns-have-no-impact-on-turnout/
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/democrats-progressives-campaign-organizing/683069/
PS. Along with many others, I spent a lot of time writing GOTV cards. While I don’t regret a moment of that, I may have to look for better ways to contribute in 2026 and special elections before that.
Sadly this isn't a surprise. Too many left leaning people of all types are simply shallow individuals who insist and insist and insist on treating their vote as a valentine. Not as a chess move, an obligation, or a duty. For them, the very idea of voting against someone instead of for someone is absurd and unthinkable. This is why Republicans have an edge. To them, the very idea of Democrats being in charge of ANYTHING is unacceptable. Too many on the left simply do not feel that way with regards to Republicans being in charge.
Hey stop with the left-bashing. I and my family are very left and we wrote numerous postcards and did numerous GOTV for our State Senator. I’m getting really sick of the left being blamed for everything — if someone who isn’t left loses an election, the left is told they should have voted. If someone who is left loses an election, the left is told they are “too far-left” or a centrist or moderate should have been run.
If we’re going to be a big tent party, we have to show it. That may mean compromising with the left sometimes, just as the left (or at least some of the left) have been willing to compromise with the center. Compromise is a two-way street.
For the trillionth time, by "the left" I mean most Democratic voters in general. Not just "progressives" who are NOT the base of the Democratic Party BTW.
Ah, got it. Misread your comment, apologies. I do agree that far too few Dems are willing to make sacrifices — like, I don’t agree with Beth Davidson in my district (NY-17) but I’m prepared to vote for her if she is the nominee.
(Though I’ll note that while we aren’t the base, we’re still a part of the party regardless.)
I would trust "progressives" more if more of them would accept that the ideology of the majority of Americans is closer to that of Virginia's than that of Vermont's. If the latter were true, we'd see more elected officials in the mold of Bernie Sanders than we do.
I mean, I know some of the ideas I support aren’t popular with a lot of Americans. I even support some ideas that are quite far out from most Dems — I’m a strong supporter of copyright reform for example.
My stance is that support for ideas can change over time. Maybe people don’t support something now, but in the future they might — and vice versa. See the LGBT debate for example, and its ebbs and flows.
Here’s a question I have for you — what do you think progressives should do, if they were to accept the Virginia vs. Vermont comparison you made? Does it become a messaging question? A policy question? A candidate recruitment question? I’ve always believed baby steps are still better than none, so I’m willing to play the long game myself. I’m just curious to know what you think, since you don’t seem to be a progressive yourself.
(I apologize if I’m not clear, I’m battling a nasty cold right now.)
They should keep in mind that American politics is bottom up, rather than top down. That ultimately voters are the deciders. If they want to push their preferred policies, voters have to ultimately accept them, and that in many cases it might take longer than they (or frankly I) would like. That if their candidates lose, it's not because "rigged" or "conspiracy" it's because their preferred candidate's ideas are simply not popular with the electorate as a whole.
I agree about 2016 not 2020. Rubio and Cruz didn't drop out in 2016. Even Warren was running as a progressive but at that point Biden was the best candidate to run the general election in my view so I don't think they made a mistake. Iff Bernie became president, he would have made the same mistakes on the border and the same post COVID and the russo-ukrainian supply shocks and inflation around the world would have hit him hard which would have ended the Progressive movement. Progressives should be thankful for Biden taking most of the blame. But if Trump won, the MAGA movement would have been finished too.
That’s actually a really balanced, logical way of looking at it. Thanks.
There are other top down elements too. Retiring reps and Senators often collude with local party machines, activist groups and DC to stop messy primaries, promote their preferred successor and coalesce behind a candidate in terms of support, endorsements and fundraising which is true for all wings of the party.
Single issue loaded Super PACs flood the airwaves with negative attack ads which are not related at all to their single issue. The electorate is also malleable and some polls found that Hillary Clinton's debates and her campaign rhetoric contributed to what is now termed "the Great Awokening" by liberalizing attitudes of half of America to many issues, especially systematic racism while Trump's did the opposite on issues like Immigration and not privatizing or "touching" Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security compared to before the 2016 primaries.
That's really a great question. For me, it's as simple as ditching the purity tests when it comes to candidates. You duke it out in the primary for your preferred candidate and then after a nominee is chosen, you go all in for that person because continuous wins are how you achieve long term policy goals and nearly every democrat is better than nearly every republican on progressive issues. I'm an early 30s attorney in the middle of the democratic party (not far left, not moderate) and the "purity tests" my law school friends hold democrats to to "earn" their votes are impossible. I don't live in an area with many competitive races (STL suburbs in Illinois), but, personally, I will almost always vote for the candidate who gives us the best chance of winning a seat who will support 90% of democratic priorities.
It's situational and issue-dependent. Just as the Republican figure to emerge from the ashes of their party's 2012 nadir was absolutely nothing like what anybody in the politics game expected, I think it's just as likely to be true about the next Democratic figure to emerge from the current abyss.
As Americans face the closure of thousands of hospitals because of our broken health care system and the atomic bomb of AI transforming every aspect of their lives in the next few years, I'm not convinced they'll conclude that Abigail Spanberger or Terry McAuliffe is their best hope for salvation. Maybe they will if 2028 turns out to be a 1996 or 2000-style low-stakes election. Seems unlikely.
He's not left bashing. He's simply bashing the left.
We get it. In your eyes the only people who qualify as "the left" are "progressives"......and those to their left.
Progressives are simultaneously the base of the Democratic party and have hijacked it but they also are not. Polls found that most self described socialists, progressives and very liberal voters voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic party while libertarians did so for the GOP. Socialists deny this because they want to project that they will not vote unless the party is more leftist and Centrists also deny this because they want to sideline the entire base in the name of Socialists and the "far left" because they won't vote anyway. Also, the centrist Welcomefest repeatedly referred to Liberals and Progressives as the base of the party who need to be sidelined. I would not call myself a progressive but I am a liberal who can vote for the right "moderate" or "progressive" candidate.
"by "the left" I mean most Democratic voters in general."
"Too many left leaning people of all types are simply shallow individuals who insist and insist and insist on treating their vote as a valentine."
Therefore, most Democratic voters in general are simply shallow individuals. Got it.
Yes, many of us are shallow individuals who don't see the trees from the forests.
"shallow individuals"? WTF are you talking about? Seriously, this is not helpful to any kind of constructive dialogue...
Whether or not this is true, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the efficacy of this particular form of outreach. And it’s worth noting that the data we have suggests that no voters in 2024 were more likely to favor Trump than Harris, and by a larger gap than among people who did vote. I love to be frustrated with Democratic voters too, but pathologizing half the political spectrum isn’t helpful.
I have been impatiently waiting for Field Team 6 to release its state-by-state data of their voter registration efforts. I am hoping that will tell a different story!
(The article in The Atlantic is paywalled. Feel free to add a gift link if you can.)
That's interesting and odd at the same time. I swear I read in past cycles that they found GOTV cards were one of the most effective ways of increasing turnout.
I wonder if this is a trend-fitting effect? If the cycle is one where people are more open to voting for democrats, the cards will be more effective. If it is a cycle where they are not, the cards will have little to no effect.
In 2016 and 2024 it seems there was a lot of people that were meh on our nominees for various reasons. In 2020 that might have been the case as well, but the hate for Trump overwhelmed that.
If the above idea is true, it'd result in years like 2008 or 2012 being years where GOTV cards did have an effect, but years like 2016 being ones where the effect is muted.
Regarding letter writing campaigns:
We had been doing them for a long time, as far back as in 2004 during John Kerry’s presidential campaign. Letter writing efforts particularly targeted states like OH which were key states Kerry needed to win. Naturally, he did not win OH as well as the presidency.
I get the impression that letter writing efforts are better done early on in a primary campaign to raise awareness about a political candidate. Letters to the editor on the other hand don’t really make an impact period.
This does not come as a surprise to those of us who have worked in field on political campaigns. The evidence around postcards has always been very flimsy compared to other forms of voter outreach. The races that have found it to have an impact are almost all lower-turnout races.
The gold standard for swaying voters is still face-to-face conversations. Postcards are fine for volunteers who cant walk between houses or talk on the phone, or are very far from any competitive district, but they also have a tendency to divert volunteers away from better forms of voter contact, which is why postcard drives are so rarely run by campaigns themselves. This means that the groups doing postcards are often from officially nonpartisan groups that don’t even mention specific candidates in their scripts because they’re not legally allowed to endorse. Among those who do endorse, the groups often don’t have access to the same level of voter targeting data as the campaigns and just kind of send the letters out to dem-leaning areas with the idea that it should have a generally positive impact. Of course, given what we know from studies it’s not clear if even a postcard campaign operating on really good data would have much impact on something like a presidential election. My recommendation for people who want to write postcards is to find some obscure down-ballot race where voters might not be familiar with the candidates and your message will carry more value.
My opinion: Postcards and letters are great for special elections, maybe midterms. Not so much for presidential elections when even infrequent and unlikely voters tend to show up. The lower the turnout the bigger the impact these would have.
In New Jersey's unusual system, each Assembly district sends two representatives to the state house. I wonder how often Assembly districts split the vote, sending one Democrat and one Republican each to the Assembly. If the answer is almost never, might the two-Assembly member system be redundant? Why not keep the size of the Assembly the same but split each district in half?
It reminds me of other states that have nested house and senate districts (such as Minnesota which for example has Senate district 1, comprised of House districts 1A and 1B). NJ seems to just have a different voting method. Minnesota has a couple of those districts where the senator is of a different party than the house members, or the house members come from different parties. I imagine NJ would also have some of those districts
Illinois also nests their State Senate and State House districts. 1 State Senate district has 2 House Districts nested within them.
NJ isn’t that unusual - WA does it the same way.
That said I’d prefer nested districts like Minnesota or Wisconsin
Maryland does much the same, with each Senate district also electing three House members. Some of the districts are split into sub districts for the House, so some voters only have one or two representatives there.
Only 8 of the 47 Senate districts have at least one House member of the opposite party of the Senator's, and all of those have House subdistricts.
there are plenty of split assembly delegations, there's two currently in Jersey rn, and on average there are usually two or three split districts with one r and one d
There used to be several. Especially in districts 1 and 2 in Cape May and Atlantic County. I'm not sure there are any right now.
I wonder if Dems could win one of the Assembly seats back in 2 this year. 1 is gone for good I think, but 2 is a Harris district. The problem is that Atlantic City turnout plummets in off years and the Republicans that tend to keep getting elected there are economically moderate making them hard to beat.
There are two: District 8 (Republican Michael Torrissi and Democrat Andrea Katz) and District 30 (Republican Sean Kean and Democrat Avi Schnall).
30 will obviously stay a split district. Lakewood has no interest in ousting Kean and Schall's firewall is pretty insurmountable by Monmouth.
8 though could easily go to 2 Dems.
As others have said, there are two split districts right now resulting from the 2023 election, but there weren’t any in the 2017, 2019, or 2021. There were two in 2015, including the race I was an intern on where we unseated a gop incumbent by 78 votes.
I think the two seat districts are largely unnecessary. (Especially because when state senate is up then you’re actually looking at three seats all with the exact same overlapping constituency.) I’d much prefer the nested seat model.
Normally in NJ if you do get a split assembly district it’s a case where the race is so close that all four candidates are essentially tied. In 2023 in Ld8 the margin between the top candidate and the bottom candidate was 0.5%. (1st and 4th were gop, w/ the two dems sandwiched in between and picking up one seat.)
I think the split districts used to be slightly more common when there was more local media and it was easier for candidates to build their own brands. Republican Chris Brown had a strong local brand in his Atlantic County district and in 2015 he led his gop running-mate by a whopping 3%, but that that was a decade ago now.
The one huge exception is Avi Schnall in District 30. The district is very conservative but dominated by the ultra orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood and they vote as a block. In ‘23 they decided that they wanted one of their own in the Assembly, so Avi Schnall ran as a dem so he could be in the assembly majority. The Lakewood Jewish community backed Schnall and one of the gop incumbents. That incumbent got 39.9% of the vote, Schnall got 31.4%, and then the other incumbent only got 19.3%. Schnall’s Democratic running mate got 9.4%. So that one is a weird case where there were huge differences between members of the same party, but I’ve never seen anything like that anywhere else.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/us/politics/trump-texas-redistricting.html
Texas Republicans are being pushed to redistrict to prevent 2026 Democratic gains.
Serious dummymander potential there if they try a stunt like this.
Good lord Dems need to put an end to this once and for all if the next time they get a federal trifecta.
I wonder what seats they’re worried about. Seems like they’ve already got a pretty good map except for maybe screwing around with South TX now that it’s become more politically advantageous for the GOP.
TX-23 seems like a sleeper seat if the GOP gets too cocky with reconfiguring the RGV. Any short term backlash in the border counties combined with continued slippage in the SATX suburbs could be a recipe for disaster if they try to shift some of those red areas to TX-28
The best they can do in the actual metro areas, aside from a redraw of TX-29, is make TX-07 and TX-32 back into swing seats. Not really possible to make them solid R without endangering the others.
Yeah, I spose I read “prevent Democratic gains” as prevent Dems winning seats in TX. They mean overall for the House and they could absolutely screw over some Dems in TX. Which, is probably why the GOP delegation was meeting and needing sign-off bc they could end up with some ugly ass districts. TX-7 and TX-32 could change drastically.
My concern if I was a GOP Rep would be my district changing and now I face a primary challenge. I doubt they’ll dummymander themselves out of a GOP seat but they could easily dummymander themselves into a primary challenge.
By all means if they want to accidentally dummymander any 2-3 of Gonzales, de la Cruz, Van Duyne, Gill, and Self out of a job - please proceed!
By all means, let's free up Van Duyne so that she can move to Georgia and be with the love of her life (Rep. Rich McCormick).
Targeting Escobar is a pipedream. You may be able to make some tweaks to 28 and 34 by taking some from 27 and 21 (which have GOP votes to spare), but precinct level-wise, I'm not sure if you gain too much. Obviously, you've got 15 in between them and MDLC has Bobby Pulido coming so I doubt they want to take too much red turf from there to move into 28 or 34. If you get any hispanic reversion, you could lose all 3 if you get cute with 15.
Democrats need to start doing this in states they control, the gloves should have already been off in time for 2024 elections. It’s absolutely beyond ridiculous that every time voters want to say no to Republican autocracy rule, the party can just add more seats in more states whenever they want to in order to always hold power.
Florida gave the party their House Majority after they redrew out Democrats. Then it was North Carolina. Without the redraws, Democrats hold the House right now and provide a much needed blockade against Trump. There are always more Democratic seats to eliminate in red states. Any person with eyeballs can see this happening and continuing to happen over and over again in state after state, yet nothing is ever done about it to actually counteract it, instead there’s concern or outrage, but no action taken.
This is yet another example of the current leadership of the Democratic party being asleep at the wheel and not realizing or not willing to fight the depths of illegality the GOP will stoop to in order to control America. There is no line they won’t cross, so we must be ready and willing to also cross those lines or else they will always win because we are unwilling to do what it takes to win while they are.
The one in North Carolina was preventable. Had we had decent state party leadership going into 2022, the state Supreme Court wouldn't have flipped to 5-2 Republican control (and Ted Budd wouldn't have won the Senate race). And as soon as that MAGA SCONC majority was seated, they promptly revisited the rulings issued by the outgoing progressive majority on gerrymandering and voter ID only weeks prior. They happily let state Rs reimpose their photo ID law for in person and mail voting, gleefully redraw the state Congressional districts from 7 D - 7 R to 10 R - 4 D as well as even more gerrymandered state legislative districts.
If Dems flip back the SCONC in 2028 or 2030, I want SERIOUS payback. Not only should the court re-revisit the partisan ruling on voter ID and gerrymandering, but the (hopefully former) judges who enabled Jefferson Griffin's attempt to end democracy in the state need to be removed and charged. And forget redrawing the lines to be fair, I want a 60% Democratic gerrymander. I want Phil Berger and former state House leader Tim Moore demoted and seethe as a minority as Democrats throw out and undo every harmful thing they pushed onto NC residents.
I'm feeling very petty.
The dumbest thing Dems did in NC was not taking Republicans up on their independent redistricting constitutional amendment offer in 2006. Dems should have known that they wouldn’t be able to hold both houses of the legislature forever in a red leaning state.
I just read that bill and while it’s not perfect, it’s a lot better than the Republican dominated legislature drawing it now. I would’ve added more guardrails, as in not having any elected officials draw the maps and have a special master recommended by two former state Supreme Court judges if they can’t agree on the maps.
I think this is the second dumbest thing they did. The dumbest thing they did was not do anything in the 2010 lame duck session after Republicans won control of the legislature. In that lame duck session, NC Democrats could've either created a redistricting commission or given the Governor veto power in redistricting. They chose to do neither, thinking Republicans would play nice once they had control of the legislature.
They should have done something in early 2010 when polls showed them losing both houses of the legislature. Instead they basically just sat and twiddled their thumbs (common story across the nation for Dems in 2010).
Changing redistricting or giving Gov veto power over it would require a constitutional amendment passing 3/5 in both Houses and approved by voters. 2010 Dems had exact 30 seats in the state Senate, but never had 72 seats in the House.
They would have had the votes when Republicans offered to support putting an amendment to the voters.
When in mid 2000 that polls showing Republicans were going to get a shellacking? Realistically Which Dem leaders would sign on to give your opponents more power?
Or in 2010, when obviously the Rs would take a majority? Which R state Reps would sign on the initial proposal of a non-partisan commission then?
They need to re-interpret the whole County rule.
Otherwise with the requirement that legislative district lines never cross auto-grouped county clusters, you can never gerrymander a 3/5 D majority in both Houses.
Aside from redraws, you can blame state parties for sucking. The Florida redraws can be traced back to Gillum losing in 2018 and the NC ones to Dems screwing up the court races in 20/22.
But you can also chalk it up to poor performances in the actual house races. Dems held up well in 2022 across the country but them tanking in CA and NY cost them the house. Then they seriously clawed back ground there in 2024 only for them to sh*t the bed in PA (and to a lesser extent MI/CO).
Also in Florida you can trace back the failure of Dems to stop the "requires 60%" intiative for a host of similar things
The current leadership is powerless to do anything about this, and the problem the last time the Democrats had a trifecta was not the leadership but the necessity to depend on Manchin and Sinema, who wouldn't vote for electoral reform over a filibuster.
I don't think Sinema would have voted for anything, but I think there's a small chance that Manchin could have been brought around to electoral reform if it could be packaged right. Something that convinced him it was aimed at moving more towards consensus building.
The problem is he'd never ever vote to end the filibuster to make that vote matter.
Exactly.
The issue is there are either independent redistricting commissions, or our delegation is already maxed out in states democrats control. California, Colorado, Washington, and New Jersey all have commissions. Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island already have all dem house delegations, and Maryland is 7-1 while Oregon is 5-1. Maybe Maine could be redrawn to shore up ME-2, but that wouldn't actually change the composition of the delegation (although it would make the seat safer). Illinois also already has a 14-3 map, which maybe could be made better? Really the only state that could do something substantial is New York, which could very easily make the current 19-7 map stronger. But that would likely be countered by Republican-led redistricting taking out urban districts in Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Florida. Other states like Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi I think are less likely because those are majority black districts, but still possible
Maryland could've been made 8-0, but the Dem legislature chose not to because of parochial interests. Several people here have made 8-0 maps of Maryland that would've satisfied the interests of state Democrats.
Interesting. What were the parochial interests?
I don't remember all of them offhand, but I do know that Dutch Ruppersberger wanted Aberdeen Proving Ground in his district. There was also resistance to splitting the Eastern Shore and having districts go from the Shore to the DC suburbs, especially if they only used water contiguity and not roadway contiguity.
Didn't GOP-appointed state judges nix the MD map?
California unfirtuately requires an amendment to undo the dumb commission. Maybe Trump hatred could goose the effort, but i doubt it.
Unfortunately not enough Democratic voters would ever vote to undo a redistricting commission. Most Democratic voters hate gerrymandering.
Tbf to MD Dems, they did finally wise up and attempt a (relatively) clean 7D-1Tossup-0R configuration this decade but the courts intervened. Thankfully Anne Arundel, and now Frederick, are now so far gone against the GOP that it didn't risk MD-06, nor did it make MD-03 a reach opportunity.
Just because a state has an independent commission, doesn’t mean the Democratic trifecta can’t pass new laws or undo it. Who cares if voters put it in place? Do you know how many times Republicans have ignored the will of the voters on ballot measures? What consequences have come from it for them? Zero. The media and voters just shrug and keep electing the same people.
This is exactly what I’m talking about. Being afraid or unwilling to do what it takes to give the party an advantage. Just because something is the way it is now and is detrimental to the party, doesn’t mean it can’t be changed! Be willing to do what it takes to win, period. If Democrats redrew California and no other states, even with the Florida and North Carolina redraws, they’d still hold the House right now.
If there were less elected Republicans in California, the party would have less money to spend in the swing seats and states. This is only 1 state example. We are giving them the same damn courtesy they would never give us and why? Having blue states with independent commissions doesn’t make sense! It is time to completely throw out the rule book and any norms that existed in order to play the game how the GOP plays it, or else we’re destined to always lose, period.
How do you think voters would react to Democrats overturning fair districts measures passed by referendum? I don't think the reaction would be the same for Democrats as for Republicans. Remember, the Democratic Party is the party of good governance, fairness and democracy. The Republican Party is the party of fuck all of you.
They would shrug and keep voting for Democrats by the time the next election comes 2 years later. This is the risk aversion that has hamstrung the party. If you don’t think this is the most likely outcome, you don’t understand how short voters memories are.
The Dobbs effect almost went away in an election just 6 months after the ruling ended abortion for the first time in half a century. Anything that happens, voters will get used to the new normal, however that looks like because it doesn’t effect THEM. The only time they rebel against the current status quo is when it hurts them. They won’t remember 2 years later that some Republicans lost their seats.
Maybe, and they could try, but I'm really unconvinced Democratic voters would react that way.
"The Democratic Party is the party of good governance, fairness and democracy. The Republican Party is the party of fuck all of you."
Which is exactly why the Democratic Party gets a LOT less leeway when it comes to bad governance than the Republican Party does. When Democrats mess up, it undermines the party's central tenet. When Republicans mess up, it reinforces the party's central tenet.
Georgia's probs as maxed out as possible aside from messing with GA-02, but they likely want to avoid the chance of that endangering GA-01/GA-12 as a result.
Hannah Pingree running for ME Gov. https://x.com/DrewSav/status/1932505232602509713
Who isn’t?
I'm still on the fence. That "Southern feller who always thought a summer trip to Maine would be cool" lane is WIDE OPEN!
Being Maine governor must be a great job.
ZzZzZz, wake me when 1 of these candidates runs for senate against Collin.
At this point, I'd be okay with Susan Rice...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/politics/house-republicans-policy-bill-regrets.html?unlocked_article_code=1.N08.AG5f.UBnEygyr_tHW&smid=url-share
I was reading the above article from the Times while catching up with the latest goings-on in the Big Brother House...er, House of Representatives, and Mike Flood's atrocious defence reminded me to ask. With there being several big opportunities in Nebraska next year (Bacon-watch in NE-02, Osborn gearing up for Senate Run part deux, Trump likely pissing off gov workers in Lincoln *and* farmers in the rest of the state) does it seem like NE-01 is going to be on the board sooner than later? And if not, are there any potential candidates who could make Mike Flood a former representative by Jan 2027?
Relevant fun fact: out of the 50 states, 5 CDs, and 1 DC that participate in the Electoral College, NE-01 was the only voting entity to swing away from DJT in 2024 compared to 2020.
My three favorite things about NE-01:
* It limits the amount of gerrymandering f***ery that can be pulled on NE-02 without putting BOTH seats at risk
* Osborn won it 51-49 last year
* The five-point special election in 2022 was a harbinger of the Red Non-Wave to come (of course, the pundit class ignored it)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/10/mike-bloomberg-to-endorse-old-foe-andrew-cuomo-in-mayors-race-00397425
Michael Bloomberg endorses Andrew Cuomo.
Just what Cuomo needs. More establishment support.
Even the establishment doesn't really like Bloomberg.
Because?
He did enter the Presidential race essentially trying to sabotage Biden in 2020 (who in hindsight, didn't really need the establishments help at all-once he won South Carolina, he was practically guaranteed the 2020 Presidential nomination anyways-and he was never really in danger of losing South Carolina).
Was he trying to sabotage Biden any more than any other candidate who ran in the primaries?
Given the timing of when he officially entered (after Iowa and New Hampshire and before Biden's best states), that's the impression I got.
Totally disagree. He just knew he couldn't win those states.
Naw he thought there was an opening, there was but Biden was the one who took advantage of it.
Schmuck! But not the least bit surprising.
That'll get him 5 extra votes.
Bloomberg would do a lot more if he would help elect Democrats at the down ballot level in general as opposed to sticking to the status quo.
This is just bad optics.
90% of the base would reject the money based on Bloomberg being a rich white Jewish man (basically, racism/anti-semitism/anti-billionaireism all rolled into to one package).
Yet Bloomberg helped elect Democrats at the down ballot level, namely in the House, back in 2018.
We hated rich people less in 2018, Israel wasn't as big an issue, so anti-Semites in our party could be ignored more easily, and racial issues weren't as relevant as they were two years later-there are large portions of people in our party who will not vote for a white person-even if there is literally no other choice that there weren't before George Floyd.
I think you're skating on thin ice with remarks like this.
I don't understand this kind of remark. Do you also think they'd reject money from Soros?
GOP State Senator Ileana Garcia, who is the co-founder of the pro-Trump group Latinas for Trump, is turning against the Trump Administration's agenda on deportations.
Garcia's anger is particularly directed at Stephen Miller, who is essentially the architect of the hard line immigration agenda.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-turns-on-trump-s-deportation-plan-inhumane/ar-AA1GrVo7?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=cb851655e4d14a3faad958fe97ce0271&ei=25
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A Florida Republican has broken from the ranks to slam President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans as "inhumane."
State Senator Ileana Garcia, a co-founder of the pro-Trump group Latinas for Trump, took to social media to voice her opposition, directly criticizing both the policy and Stephen Miller, the architect behind the Trump administration's hardline immigration measures.
"This is not what we voted for," Garcia wrote in a post on X."I have always supported Trump, through thick and thin. However, this is unacceptable and inhumane."
Would be hilarious if it wasn't attached to so much human suffering. This is exactly what she voted for. She might be able to delude herself into thinking otherwise, but this was his promised outcome if he won.
Makes me wonder, what was the Latinas for Trump all about?
Ana Navarro would have a field day with Garcia.
Still makes my head spin that Bill Kristol, Ana Navarro, and Barbara Comstock are fully libbed out at this point. Realignment is a pill!
Everyone loves authoritarianism until it targets them and no one is left to defend them. They got what they voted for, now they get to deal with it. And I’d bet just like last time these people will still vote for Republicans again. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Anyone with a brain knew this was what was going to happen.
You know, if her disagreement with this is actually real it just makes me wonder sooooo hard, what was she thinking? Nothing happening right now is some kind of huge shock. Much worse than this was actually possible (just wait, who knows). I know, people are idiots, etc.
Has she not googled Stephen Miller before?
Looks like the republican in Fl senate 19 won 54-46 and the republican in FL state house 32 wins 55-45
A 10 pt overperformance! Hopeful this might spell a statewide win in FL next year.
About 20% in in NJ, and it’s looking good for Sherrill.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/10/us/elections/results-new-jersey-governor-primary.html
More than double Fulop’s number, with Baraka narrowly in third. I’d imagine these figures hold - it would take a lot for either of them to make up that margin
McIver indicted. Ridiculous. But as the saying goes, a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.
https://bsky.app/profile/marcelias.bsky.social/post/3lrc447fla22b
Doesn't an indictment require a grand jury? There's something really fishy about Habba getting a grand jury in deep-blue Newark to indict McIvery in just three weeks.
She was indicted by a grand jury.
I see. I was expecting them to dismiss it because I'd expect it to be filled with Democrats.
A court might throw it out.
Having sat in a grand jury, it's very difficult for a grand jury not to indict someone.
Why? And did your grand jury refuse to indict anyone? (Obviously, I wouldn't ask specifics.)
The standard, at least in a New York state for local county grab juries, is much lower than for conviction. Basically, you just need to believe there is reasonable cause to believe a crime occured and that the accused committed it. You also only need a majority of the jury to agree, not everyone. I don't think any prosecutor would bring it before a grand jury unless they were sure that an indictment was coming down. We heard about 9-11 cases, a light load. There were never more than 3-4 or so votes against indictment on any one charge, as far as I can remember, and most were unanimous. We would have needed 10 to vote no not to indict.
Ciattarelli declared the winner on the Republican side.
Sherrill was just declared the Democratic winner by the AP.
AP declares Sherill the winner for NJ dem governor.
Getting about 35% so far. Good showing considering the number of strong candidates in the field.
Baraka's in 2nd place at 19.6% with 84% in.
Not bad for someone who wasn't considered a front runner early on in the race.
Getting arrested by Trump's ICE goons helped a lot in that regard.
The LG candidate for NJ is picked by the gov candidate, right?
Any ideas who Sherill will pick as her running mate?
I was just thinking about that. Don’t know. Fulop would be a good choice but that might be too North Jersey.
Fulop's religion (which implies that he is pro-Israel) essentially makes him a non-starter if she wants to keep the Democratic base from going third party.
Are you referring to the denomination of Judaism that Fulop practices?
No, his being Jewish at all implies that he supports Israel's right to exist, which apparently is anathema to most of our base (not necessarily anyone here-I think we can all tell the difference between Likud and Israel proper, but most of the base can't or doesn't care).
It's the same reason Shapiro is a non-starter on a national ticket.
I think going into this topic from this angle is not a good fit for here. Israel/Palestine topics are not allowed here.
No, but I don't think simply being Jewish is an issue in _New Jersey_, and if it is, antisemitism is much more ascendant throughout the U.S. than I think it is.
Totally ridiculous statement.
If I were her, I'd pick Baraka.
I would agree. That would fire up the Democratic Party base in NJ in a way it hasn't before.