In IL-7 and IL-9, the vote was split so much. It would work so much better in Illinois to run our primaries like Alaska and take the top four vote getters regardless of party.
Illinois actually uses a system like that for the mayoral elections in Danville, except it's officially nonpartisan, the top-four general election is first-past-the-post, and the first round is held on the general election date (April of each year that precedes a presidential election) if four or fewer candidates file to run (which is what happened in 2023, so it's been a while since Danville has needed a February nonpartisan primary for mayor). If that system were used in the IL-Sen race, you'd have three known Democrats (Stratton, Raja, Kelly) and a known Republican (Tracy) in the general election, so you'd end up with Don Tracy being a near-prohibitive favorite in the general election, which is, thankfully, not happening in real-life.
You'd really need RCV in the runoff or general election, like what Alaska does, to make a top-four system work.
Illinois really has gone through a major changing of the guard these past 8 years, which makes sense with the passage of time of course - but after January of next year the dean of the delegation will be Bill Foster (who was first elected in 2008). It’s definitely a big shift from when people like Schakowsky, Davis, Rush, Gutierrez, Durbin, and Shimkus, who had been in office since the 90s, represented the state.
"Dean of the delegation" isn't really a defined role to my knowledge, does it for sure go to the person with the longest continuous service or longest overall?
Dean of a state's delegation is more of a stat/title than any kind of political role. It simply refers to the member of Congress with the longest continuous service
I am sure there is an official definition because it does (by tradition) carrying one duty. The senior member of the state delegation of opposite party escorts the Speaker-elect down the isle on the first day of the new Congress
A simple question: would it have been wiser for Cindy Burbank to have kept her mouth shut, and announce her support for Dan Osborn, Nebraska’s Independent candidate for Senate, only ahead of the general election? I fail to see what she has achieved by voicing her intentions already now – which merely gave Nebraska’s Republican Secretary of State the ammunition he needed to throw her off the ballot.
To put it another way, I fail to see any upside to her voicing her intentions now.
With reference to people who are mildly informed and think before they vote, yes. Unfortunately, that’s probably not as overwhelming a majority as we would like to believe.
Anyone have a clue in reference to that VA underperformance? Would have thought with the redistricting vote nearing that the Democrats would have been energized there???
1) State Dems are working overtime on the redistricting vote, ergo they didn't focus as much attention on this race especially since they have a comfortable majority already.
2) The redistricting vote is not nearly as popular as expected (which unfortunately is backed by early vote data - Republicans are turning out in droves).
⬆️"The redistricting vote is not nearly as popular as expected".
The GOP has been sending out mailers that mislead traditionally Democratic voters about the redistricting vote - especially to African American voters. Center for Common Ground is running twice weekly phonebanks to BIPOC voters. I restacked some information from a recent Chop Wood, Carry Water post about it here:
In addition, if you want to encourage the YES vote, Activate America (www.activateamerica.vote) still has plenty of addresses for their VA "Vote Yes" campaign. There are mail ASAP but no later than April 8.
All signs in my part of Northern Virginia points towards an energetic NO vote. The YES vote is almost non existent and the NO campaign cleverly uses old misleading Spanberger comments. Many of my Democratic friends could vote NO despite my passion for YES. Time for the YES campaign to step it up. I am unfortunately getting more pessimistic about this critical vote.
What group are you talking about? Is there a formal group spearheading this? I'm in NC, so I don't know what the ground game looks like there. Are people door-knocking about voting yes?
I'm still writing postcards with Activate America (www.activateamerica.vote) for the Yes campaign. They are chipping away at the number of unclaimed names and addresses, but there are still a lot to go.
There also appear to be lot of groups doing phonebanks:
As Robert Hubbell likes to say in his substack, "we are not potted plants!" Action on your part is always required to get the outcome that you want. That is how grassroots works!
I have a very bad feeling that NO will win. Too many NoVA Democrats are the "good government" types who hate gerrymandering in any form for any reason.
Frankly, that's what I thought about Democrats in the California Bay Area, until they proved me wrong last fall. Don't forget that Prop 50 significantly outperformed the polls.
Dems (and Louise Lucas specifically, possibly assisted by Ben Tribbett) overplayed their hand terribly during the entire process. Pushing for an ugly 10-1 map instead of a cleaner 8-3 or 9-2 was political malpractice. It's a fine line, but it came off less as fighting back against Trump (which worked in California) and more about Dems selfishly taking power for themselves. The constant taunting on Twitter and in the press made it worse, doubled down by the infighting about the districts themselves among Dems jockeying for seats.
Now we can underperform Spanberger by a lot and still win, but this has become a Tilt-D race instead of Likely D. And let's not forgot a lot of the Dems in NoVa are good government types who are normally partisan D but might not put up with this hackery.
I think a 9-2 map would have been a safer choice, and less likely to potentially be a dummymander (even if not this year.) And I honestly didn't like Lucas calling other Democrats "cucks" when they raised such concerns.
I also dislike good government "goo-goo"ism at least at the moment related to this issue. Why should we play fair against MAGATs? For YES to pass they should do like in California and emphasize the "us against Trump" angle.
I don't think your average voter knows or cares about 10-1 vs. 9-2. Ultimately, we'll be counting on antipathy to Trump to drive turnout on this. I think Michael's assessment above (that it'll pass by closer to Harris margins than Spanbarger) is correct.
What I've read, and I may be misremembering on the exact details is that during early early voting in VA they do very few polling places per county which inevitably skews early results towards GOP rural areas. Once the big counties start adding more polling places that's normally when you start seeing turnout there ramp up.
The other thing is that we have to remember (as seen in recent races) late-stage attention is what matters. We may be in deep with learning about what's happening where but for the nedian voter they only pay attention at the very end. I think that's when Dem turnout will rise up again.
Illinois results last night were mixed but overall either the person I wanted to win, won, and/or the person I wanted to lose, lost.
• Sen: Stratton had been my preferred Senate candidate from the beginning
• IL-2: I preferred Peters, but if the choice is between someone supported by AIPAC or someone literally prosecuted for public corruption, I will take AIPAC
• IL-7: Nothing really strongly recommended Ford in particular personally, but he was targeted by crypto, AI and AIPAC dollars, so I'm glad he won.
• IL-8: Basically a clusterfuck of a half-dozen relatively equally qualified candidates until a former Rep. jumped in and cruised to the nomination, nothing to be done really.
• IL-9: Carpetbagging bugs me, influencers bug me, I'm glad Kat didn't win. Biss annoyed me in 2018 when he kicked Carlos Ramirez-Rosa to the curb with no support, but he's a strong progressive.
Good summary. I'm happy that Climate Hawks Vote had its 1st primary win (Biss). Didn't have a dog in the Senate fight but personally happy that Stratton won. The other House races are meh (I liked Peters in IL-02 and Ahmed and Morrison in IL-08).
Axios is calling this a “complete wipeout” for “the Squad”. Not mentioned in their article is the vote-splitting. I heard IL-07’s progressives collectively took 50% of the vote. They also tried to somehow spin Biss winning as a left loss because Kat didn’t win.
I saw that and almost commented here about how absurd their "conclusion" was.
A more progressive candidate defeated moderate candidates in 3 out of 5 of the primaries being watched, including the Senate primary, which was the most important. AIPAC spent a ton of money running deceptive ads and could still only get 2 seats. And I'm not even sure they deserve much credit for Bean's win, since she had a ton of other advantages.
Sounds to me like a bad night for AIPAC, crypto, and corporate moderates rather than the progressives.
Robert Peters maybe as well. The thing is though, the Squad and progressives aren't necessarily the same -- Axios was subtly implying they were. There are lots of progressives who are not Squad members - Pramila Jayapal, Jamie Raskin, Mark Pocan, Becca Balint, etc. I put "the Squad" in quotations for this reason.
The Progressive Caucus itself did. Biss is absolutely a progressive. Actually I believe he was the progressive alternative to Pritzker in 2018 (before Pritzker became a progressive).
It seems like it was a mixed bag yesterday in the IL primaries with respect to candidates taking $$$ from PACs like AIPAC and crypto currency.
Donna Miller (IL-02) and Melissa Bean (IL-08) were both supported by special interest groups and won their races, while Daniel Biss (IL-09) won his race despite $$$ of outside money from AIPAC and others being spent to promote one of his opponents Laura Fine. IIRC Daniel Biss eschewed corporate money altogether.
I still have hope that the 16% who are undecided are Democrats who will decide late and between one of the top Democrats and that many of those favoring the 1-5% candidates will vote strategically at the end. (Hope springs eternal.)
I wonder if it's worth our time to try to boost either Hilton or Bianco to try to consolidate Republican support around one of them. I feel like that never really works, but it's an option.
I'm getting real sick of seeing all these Steyer ads bombarding me everywhere. It's bad enough we have billionaires like Musk and Zuck messing with us at the federal level. I don't need this at the local level.
Actually, I like the fact that Porter is in the race. She’s making this a real contest whereas prior to her and Swalwell, it wasn’t that much of a contest.
I didn’t have a dog in IL-Sen but I like Stratton and I think she’ll make a wonderful Senator. Speaks to Pritzker’s political instincts and heft that he stuck to his guns and help push her through with his organization when at one point it seemed like Raja had basically consolidated the race to himself.
I’m also very glad Biss won. I was unimpressed with Kat both as a carpetbagger and as an influencer, and Biss has always been a solid progressive.
I too am glad that Biss won, or at least that Kat lost. Not because of her personally, but because I'm really sick of the politics and government-as-entertainment mentality that helped produce Trump, and am not a fan of "influencers" simply parachuting into a vacant district that they have little connection to.
That was my big gripe with her too. Everything else I didn’t like about her - like apparently letting Ryan Grim goad her on Bluesky into reworking her issues page into regurgitating USAID conspiracy theories - is downstream of the fact that I find political influencers deeply unserious people
Agreed. The stuff about Taiwan was pretty bad also. There is a reason we don't commit to militarily defending Taiwan. All of our diplomatic relationships recognize "One China." Even Taiwan doesn't actually want an American military guarantee
i sort of think you need to play the influencer game in the modern political era in order to win. You can't beat Trump by playing chess when he's playing checkers.
Mamdani vs. Cuomo proved this and so did Talarico/Crockett and Stratton/Raja to lesser extents
And if we're going to have a moderate (Bean in IL-08), at least it's in the most competitive of these four districts (at Harris +7), where a moderate may help hold the seat in future elections. The others are all Harris +33 and up.
Yeah, I know some online are (understandably) upset by the relatively meager showing in IL-2, but honestly that race was so much more under-the-radar than IL-7/8/9
I am curious about the State Auditor's Race here in Iowa. The current Lt. Governor will be running for Auditor. There is a GOP primary in this race. I wonder whether the Lt. Governor will ask for any help at all from Kim Reynolds or whether Reynolds is simply too toxic at this point.
“The House, Republicans privately admit, seems lost, and the Senate could follow. But it’s unclear how much Trump cares. He has made remarkably little effort to sell the war, or explain why it had to happen now”
We have a shocking number of credible candidates for these:
CO-03 - businessmen Alex Kelloff and Dwayne Romero
CO-04 - former 2-star Admiral Eileen Laubacher
FL-04 - attorney Michael Kirwan
IN-05 - State Sen. JD Ford
NJ-02 - Mayor Zack Mullock, former Senior Advisor to USAID Bailey Winder, attorney Tim Alexander
NV-02 - former Majority Leader of the State Assembly Teresa Benitez-Thompson, former Executive Director of the Nevada Democratic Party Matthew Fonken, entrepeneur Greg Kidd
NY-01 - air traffic controller Chris Gallant
TX-23 - attorney and County Child Welfare Board member Katy Padilla Stout
In NY-02 i'm currently a little bit underwhelmed by the democratic frontrunners (former County Exec Patrick Halpin hasn't held elected office since 1991, although he is currently appointed chair of the County Water Board. union leader Edwin Osorio so far seems to have no momentum).
I am a huge fan of former U.S. Consul General to Pakistan and former Chair of the Spokane County Dems Carmela Conroy, though, and would love to see her flip WA-05
FL-16 i think no shot because it looks like RNC Chairman Joe Gruters's wife Sydney is going to run here, and she's pretty much automatically going to get a lot of institutional support + money.
But I do think former State Dept. official Chris Backemeyer could be good in NE-01, though I did hope that former State Sen. Carol Blood (2024 nominee for this, 2022 nominee for Governor) would run again
Idk the right equations to plug in here, but I'm a bit nervous at the sometimes DCCC risk of focusing on reach seats at the expense of more winnable seats. But also know making those reach seats never have a breakthrough without trying so (shrug)
Totally get that, but also feel if there’s any year to reach for the unreachable stars, it’s a year with gas prices soon crossing $4 per gallon, a chaotic war in the Middle East with American soldiers dying, government agents kidnapping US citizens on the streets and a government wide cover up of the Epstein files while Trump and the party in power completely ignores passing any legislation on affordability.
Scenarios like these come along once in a lifetime for an opposition party, so we may as well go deep and see if a few unexpected seats somehow fall to us in a wave.
Electoral environment is going from bad to worse for Republicans in our polling — among enthusiastic voters, the generic is a tick above D+9 in our latest survey, which...that's catastrophic for Republicans.
Like, if that holds, that's where Talarico becomes a near-favorite.
Generic is D+7 among registered voters in our survey; D+9 among those who say they'll "probably" or "definitely" vote. I can only speak for our surveys; that's not middling.
Another reason why Matt Mahan is not ready to be Governor:
He reluctantly approved of Prop 50 as opposed to the majority of Democrats who did. Similarly, Rep. Sam Liccardo, who filled in Rep. Anna Eshoo’s seat after she retired and endorsed Mahan for Mayor when he first ran, also reluctantly approved of Prop 50.
In IL-7 and IL-9, the vote was split so much. It would work so much better in Illinois to run our primaries like Alaska and take the top four vote getters regardless of party.
Illinois actually uses a system like that for the mayoral elections in Danville, except it's officially nonpartisan, the top-four general election is first-past-the-post, and the first round is held on the general election date (April of each year that precedes a presidential election) if four or fewer candidates file to run (which is what happened in 2023, so it's been a while since Danville has needed a February nonpartisan primary for mayor). If that system were used in the IL-Sen race, you'd have three known Democrats (Stratton, Raja, Kelly) and a known Republican (Tracy) in the general election, so you'd end up with Don Tracy being a near-prohibitive favorite in the general election, which is, thankfully, not happening in real-life.
You'd really need RCV in the runoff or general election, like what Alaska does, to make a top-four system work.
I think using rank choice or most acceptable would be better than our current system.
Illinois really has gone through a major changing of the guard these past 8 years, which makes sense with the passage of time of course - but after January of next year the dean of the delegation will be Bill Foster (who was first elected in 2008). It’s definitely a big shift from when people like Schakowsky, Davis, Rush, Gutierrez, Durbin, and Shimkus, who had been in office since the 90s, represented the state.
That’s quite the stat!
Also, Foster hasn't even been serving continuously since 2008 - he lost in 2010 and got elected in a different seat in 2012.
Oh true, in that case it would be Quigley then - it will become Foster if Quigley wins his mayoral election next year.
"Dean of the delegation" isn't really a defined role to my knowledge, does it for sure go to the person with the longest continuous service or longest overall?
Dean of a state's delegation is more of a stat/title than any kind of political role. It simply refers to the member of Congress with the longest continuous service
Yeah I guess what I'm musing is, since it's informal role and since non-consecutive terms aren't super common, would they make that distinction?
I am sure there is an official definition because it does (by tradition) carrying one duty. The senior member of the state delegation of opposite party escorts the Speaker-elect down the isle on the first day of the new Congress
A simple question: would it have been wiser for Cindy Burbank to have kept her mouth shut, and announce her support for Dan Osborn, Nebraska’s Independent candidate for Senate, only ahead of the general election? I fail to see what she has achieved by voicing her intentions already now – which merely gave Nebraska’s Republican Secretary of State the ammunition he needed to throw her off the ballot.
To put it another way, I fail to see any upside to her voicing her intentions now.
Probably. But she may have a decent chance to get back on the ballot. And wouldn't Forbes being anti-abortion benefit Osborne anyway?
With reference to people who are mildly informed and think before they vote, yes. Unfortunately, that’s probably not as overwhelming a majority as we would like to believe.
Yeah, a majority, but hardly overwhelming there. Also, incredibly low on people's priorities these days.
Anyone have a clue in reference to that VA underperformance? Would have thought with the redistricting vote nearing that the Democrats would have been energized there???
I've seen two theories so far:
1) State Dems are working overtime on the redistricting vote, ergo they didn't focus as much attention on this race especially since they have a comfortable majority already.
2) The redistricting vote is not nearly as popular as expected (which unfortunately is backed by early vote data - Republicans are turning out in droves).
⬆️"The redistricting vote is not nearly as popular as expected".
The GOP has been sending out mailers that mislead traditionally Democratic voters about the redistricting vote - especially to African American voters. Center for Common Ground is running twice weekly phonebanks to BIPOC voters. I restacked some information from a recent Chop Wood, Carry Water post about it here:
https://substack.com/@cj277/note/c-229345330
In addition, if you want to encourage the YES vote, Activate America (www.activateamerica.vote) still has plenty of addresses for their VA "Vote Yes" campaign. There are mail ASAP but no later than April 8.
All signs in my part of Northern Virginia points towards an energetic NO vote. The YES vote is almost non existent and the NO campaign cleverly uses old misleading Spanberger comments. Many of my Democratic friends could vote NO despite my passion for YES. Time for the YES campaign to step it up. I am unfortunately getting more pessimistic about this critical vote.
⬆️"Time for the YES campaign to step it up".
What group are you talking about? Is there a formal group spearheading this? I'm in NC, so I don't know what the ground game looks like there. Are people door-knocking about voting yes?
I'm still writing postcards with Activate America (www.activateamerica.vote) for the Yes campaign. They are chipping away at the number of unclaimed names and addresses, but there are still a lot to go.
There also appear to be lot of groups doing phonebanks:
www.mobilize.us/?event_type=2&q=Rediscrict
As Robert Hubbell likes to say in his substack, "we are not potted plants!" Action on your part is always required to get the outcome that you want. That is how grassroots works!
Or, the early vote tends to be GOP-leaning in Virginia, as we saw in 2025, and the GOP state house candidate benefited from that.
I have a very bad feeling that NO will win. Too many NoVA Democrats are the "good government" types who hate gerrymandering in any form for any reason.
Frankly, that's what I thought about Democrats in the California Bay Area, until they proved me wrong last fall. Don't forget that Prop 50 significantly outperformed the polls.
What’s the prediction on the referendum ? I believe polymarket dropped below 80%…
Betting odds are not relevant to this site.
I still think it passes.
I'd like to see a new poll.
I’m going to say it passes by six percentage points (aligned with Harris vote from 2024) but clearly not at Spanberger double digit levels…
Interesting excerpt from an early Nov 2025 WAPO article on the Virginia elections (almost seems comparable to the current situation) -
“…Some of the highest early voting turnout has been concentrated in Republican-leaning areas, according to VPAP data.”
And we all know how THOSE elections ended up 👍🏻
Potentially unpopular opinion here..
Dems (and Louise Lucas specifically, possibly assisted by Ben Tribbett) overplayed their hand terribly during the entire process. Pushing for an ugly 10-1 map instead of a cleaner 8-3 or 9-2 was political malpractice. It's a fine line, but it came off less as fighting back against Trump (which worked in California) and more about Dems selfishly taking power for themselves. The constant taunting on Twitter and in the press made it worse, doubled down by the infighting about the districts themselves among Dems jockeying for seats.
Now we can underperform Spanberger by a lot and still win, but this has become a Tilt-D race instead of Likely D. And let's not forgot a lot of the Dems in NoVa are good government types who are normally partisan D but might not put up with this hackery.
I think a 9-2 map would have been a safer choice, and less likely to potentially be a dummymander (even if not this year.) And I honestly didn't like Lucas calling other Democrats "cucks" when they raised such concerns.
I also dislike good government "goo-goo"ism at least at the moment related to this issue. Why should we play fair against MAGATs? For YES to pass they should do like in California and emphasize the "us against Trump" angle.
I don't think your average voter knows or cares about 10-1 vs. 9-2. Ultimately, we'll be counting on antipathy to Trump to drive turnout on this. I think Michael's assessment above (that it'll pass by closer to Harris margins than Spanbarger) is correct.
I think a map that looked cleaner and wasn’t so naked a power grab would’ve been reported differently across social and traditional media.
Maybe, but I still don't think 90+% of people care.
What I've read, and I may be misremembering on the exact details is that during early early voting in VA they do very few polling places per county which inevitably skews early results towards GOP rural areas. Once the big counties start adding more polling places that's normally when you start seeing turnout there ramp up.
The other thing is that we have to remember (as seen in recent races) late-stage attention is what matters. We may be in deep with learning about what's happening where but for the nedian voter they only pay attention at the very end. I think that's when Dem turnout will rise up again.
Illinois results last night were mixed but overall either the person I wanted to win, won, and/or the person I wanted to lose, lost.
• Sen: Stratton had been my preferred Senate candidate from the beginning
• IL-2: I preferred Peters, but if the choice is between someone supported by AIPAC or someone literally prosecuted for public corruption, I will take AIPAC
• IL-7: Nothing really strongly recommended Ford in particular personally, but he was targeted by crypto, AI and AIPAC dollars, so I'm glad he won.
• IL-8: Basically a clusterfuck of a half-dozen relatively equally qualified candidates until a former Rep. jumped in and cruised to the nomination, nothing to be done really.
• IL-9: Carpetbagging bugs me, influencers bug me, I'm glad Kat didn't win. Biss annoyed me in 2018 when he kicked Carlos Ramirez-Rosa to the curb with no support, but he's a strong progressive.
Mixed bag. Glad to see Fine, Conyears-Ervin, and Crypto Raja lose. Offset by the Melissa Bean win.
Good summary. I'm happy that Climate Hawks Vote had its 1st primary win (Biss). Didn't have a dog in the Senate fight but personally happy that Stratton won. The other House races are meh (I liked Peters in IL-02 and Ahmed and Morrison in IL-08).
I preferred Morrison as well for more LGBTQ representation, but yeah the race really changed when Bean got in.
Axios is calling this a “complete wipeout” for “the Squad”. Not mentioned in their article is the vote-splitting. I heard IL-07’s progressives collectively took 50% of the vote. They also tried to somehow spin Biss winning as a left loss because Kat didn’t win.
that sound you might hear is my eyes rolling at terminal velocity.
Axios is the Melissa Bean of on-line news sites.
I saw that and almost commented here about how absurd their "conclusion" was.
A more progressive candidate defeated moderate candidates in 3 out of 5 of the primaries being watched, including the Senate primary, which was the most important. AIPAC spent a ton of money running deceptive ads and could still only get 2 seats. And I'm not even sure they deserve much credit for Bean's win, since she had a ton of other advantages.
Sounds to me like a bad night for AIPAC, crypto, and corporate moderates rather than the progressives.
I mean there's no doubt that Kat was a potential squad member so that' definitely a loss
Robert Peters maybe as well. The thing is though, the Squad and progressives aren't necessarily the same -- Axios was subtly implying they were. There are lots of progressives who are not Squad members - Pramila Jayapal, Jamie Raskin, Mark Pocan, Becca Balint, etc. I put "the Squad" in quotations for this reason.
Yeah, and if I remember correctly Raskin and Jayapal both endorsed Biss.
The Progressive Caucus itself did. Biss is absolutely a progressive. Actually I believe he was the progressive alternative to Pritzker in 2018 (before Pritzker became a progressive).
Maybe they'll bring back their "Red Tsunami Watch" gem from 2022.
It seems like it was a mixed bag yesterday in the IL primaries with respect to candidates taking $$$ from PACs like AIPAC and crypto currency.
Donna Miller (IL-02) and Melissa Bean (IL-08) were both supported by special interest groups and won their races, while Daniel Biss (IL-09) won his race despite $$$ of outside money from AIPAC and others being spent to promote one of his opponents Laura Fine. IIRC Daniel Biss eschewed corporate money altogether.
Interestingly enough, Politico had an "AIPAC in Disarray" piece about this, in contrast with Axios' obnoxious drivel I mentioned above.
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/18/aipac-israel-illinois-primary-results-00833615
Thanks for the link! I will check it out.
AIPAC also was against Ford , yes?
IDK, I’m not from IL.
Berger wants the NCSBE to examine 220 ballots, no word on whether the GOP-controlled board will act on it
https://www.wral.com/news/nccapitol/nc-elections-board-berger-recount-request-senate-page-march-2026/
Looks like he's going to try the same shenanigans that got Jefferson Griffin slapped down in May 2025.
UPDATE: In a bipartisan decision, NCSBE declined Berger's request.
CA Gov Poll by UC Berkeley ISG: Same old same old
Hilton and Bianco 17% and 16%.
Porter and Swalwell 13%; Steyer 10%
(3,889 LVs 3/9-15)
I still have hope that the 16% who are undecided are Democrats who will decide late and between one of the top Democrats and that many of those favoring the 1-5% candidates will vote strategically at the end. (Hope springs eternal.)
Would be better if those 1-5% gave up the ghost and dropped out
Agree. Too late to get off the ballot but down the road they certainly could suspend campaigns and ask supporters to vote for someone else.
I wonder if it's worth our time to try to boost either Hilton or Bianco to try to consolidate Republican support around one of them. I feel like that never really works, but it's an option.
The same founder of Gmail who is donating to Matt Mahan’s gubernatorial campaign is also donating to Steve Hilton’s gubernatorial campaign.
If Hilton consolidates enough support from Republicans, I think Silicon Valley donors may contribute to this.
I'm getting real sick of seeing all these Steyer ads bombarding me everywhere. It's bad enough we have billionaires like Musk and Zuck messing with us at the federal level. I don't need this at the local level.
Steyer dropping out of the race would do a lot of good for Democrats.
Or Steyer and Porter dropping out. That would be ideal
Actually, I like the fact that Porter is in the race. She’s making this a real contest whereas prior to her and Swalwell, it wasn’t that much of a contest.
IDK doesn't look like it's doing much good, i'd hate for their to be a lockout in California
Once again, I will note that if Steyer were to drop out and endorse Swalwell or Porter, the top two lockout fears would immediately end.
Of the various candidates, he's the most free to do so and has the most support currently. So his dropping out would make the most impact.
I didn’t have a dog in IL-Sen but I like Stratton and I think she’ll make a wonderful Senator. Speaks to Pritzker’s political instincts and heft that he stuck to his guns and help push her through with his organization when at one point it seemed like Raja had basically consolidated the race to himself.
I’m also very glad Biss won. I was unimpressed with Kat both as a carpetbagger and as an influencer, and Biss has always been a solid progressive.
The other big primaries, eh, mixed bag.
davis' successor is better than the alternative too!
True’
I too am glad that Biss won, or at least that Kat lost. Not because of her personally, but because I'm really sick of the politics and government-as-entertainment mentality that helped produce Trump, and am not a fan of "influencers" simply parachuting into a vacant district that they have little connection to.
That was my big gripe with her too. Everything else I didn’t like about her - like apparently letting Ryan Grim goad her on Bluesky into reworking her issues page into regurgitating USAID conspiracy theories - is downstream of the fact that I find political influencers deeply unserious people
Agreed. The stuff about Taiwan was pretty bad also. There is a reason we don't commit to militarily defending Taiwan. All of our diplomatic relationships recognize "One China." Even Taiwan doesn't actually want an American military guarantee
Biden gave that, and I support defending democracy worldwide.
i sort of think you need to play the influencer game in the modern political era in order to win. You can't beat Trump by playing chess when he's playing checkers.
Mamdani vs. Cuomo proved this and so did Talarico/Crockett and Stratton/Raja to lesser extents
Could not agree with this more and I've commented to this effect here before. The fewer "influencers" involved in our politics the better....
And if we're going to have a moderate (Bean in IL-08), at least it's in the most competitive of these four districts (at Harris +7), where a moderate may help hold the seat in future elections. The others are all Harris +33 and up.
In hindsight, at least for progs, IL-7 and IL-8 were much more important than IL-9 (don't think IL-2 was really in play)
Yeah, I know some online are (understandably) upset by the relatively meager showing in IL-2, but honestly that race was so much more under-the-radar than IL-7/8/9
And beating Jackson was the most important thing there.
Thanks for great reporting. My subscription has been a great investment. It really delivers.
I am curious about the State Auditor's Race here in Iowa. The current Lt. Governor will be running for Auditor. There is a GOP primary in this race. I wonder whether the Lt. Governor will ask for any help at all from Kim Reynolds or whether Reynolds is simply too toxic at this point.
Fingers crossed Reynolds is too toxic and there's more Iowans wanting a change election from governor to Senator to AG.
She is hellishly toxic.
Republicans privately have given up hopes of holding the House and are more worried about holding the Senate.
https://x.com/JonLemire/status/2034072629762519480
“The House, Republicans privately admit, seems lost, and the Senate could follow. But it’s unclear how much Trump cares. He has made remarkably little effort to sell the war, or explain why it had to happen now”
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/03/trump-iran-war-endure/686425/?gift=SCYx-5scVta3-cr_IlgTyUx8meCYJK4W639a8R11IkY
Democrats are expanding the playing field in November for House seats.
https://x.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/2033876678619931072
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says its updated list shows at least *44* GOP-held US House seats are now in play for midterms
Seats I could see come on the board soon:
-AZ-08
-CO-03
-CO-04
-FL-04
-IN-05
-MN-08
-NJ-02
-NV-02
-NY-01
-TX-23
We do have a credible candidate in IN-5, State Sen. J.D. Ford.
We have a shocking number of credible candidates for these:
CO-03 - businessmen Alex Kelloff and Dwayne Romero
CO-04 - former 2-star Admiral Eileen Laubacher
FL-04 - attorney Michael Kirwan
IN-05 - State Sen. JD Ford
NJ-02 - Mayor Zack Mullock, former Senior Advisor to USAID Bailey Winder, attorney Tim Alexander
NV-02 - former Majority Leader of the State Assembly Teresa Benitez-Thompson, former Executive Director of the Nevada Democratic Party Matthew Fonken, entrepeneur Greg Kidd
NY-01 - air traffic controller Chris Gallant
TX-23 - attorney and County Child Welfare Board member Katy Padilla Stout
only seats w'out are AZ-08, MN-08
A few others are NE-01, WA-05, and NY-02 but the incumbent Rs ran decently ahead of Trump here.
Might add FL-16 since it's only Trump+15 and is an open seat, and maybe we get a really bad R here.
In NY-02 i'm currently a little bit underwhelmed by the democratic frontrunners (former County Exec Patrick Halpin hasn't held elected office since 1991, although he is currently appointed chair of the County Water Board. union leader Edwin Osorio so far seems to have no momentum).
I am a huge fan of former U.S. Consul General to Pakistan and former Chair of the Spokane County Dems Carmela Conroy, though, and would love to see her flip WA-05
FL-16 i think no shot because it looks like RNC Chairman Joe Gruters's wife Sydney is going to run here, and she's pretty much automatically going to get a lot of institutional support + money.
But I do think former State Dept. official Chris Backemeyer could be good in NE-01, though I did hope that former State Sen. Carol Blood (2024 nominee for this, 2022 nominee for Governor) would run again
It would be delicious if Hamadeh (AZ-08) lost a second election by a tiny handful of votes...
Idk the right equations to plug in here, but I'm a bit nervous at the sometimes DCCC risk of focusing on reach seats at the expense of more winnable seats. But also know making those reach seats never have a breakthrough without trying so (shrug)
Totally get that, but also feel if there’s any year to reach for the unreachable stars, it’s a year with gas prices soon crossing $4 per gallon, a chaotic war in the Middle East with American soldiers dying, government agents kidnapping US citizens on the streets and a government wide cover up of the Epstein files while Trump and the party in power completely ignores passing any legislation on affordability.
Scenarios like these come along once in a lifetime for an opposition party, so we may as well go deep and see if a few unexpected seats somehow fall to us in a wave.
Private polling:
https://x.com/lxeagle17/status/2034299448596271236
Electoral environment is going from bad to worse for Republicans in our polling — among enthusiastic voters, the generic is a tick above D+9 in our latest survey, which...that's catastrophic for Republicans.
Like, if that holds, that's where Talarico becomes a near-favorite.
Generic is D+7 among registered voters in our survey; D+9 among those who say they'll "probably" or "definitely" vote. I can only speak for our surveys; that's not middling.
Would that mean 40 House seats and 4 R-held Senate seats flip?
I’d hope for more than catastrophic for the GOP’s chances this November but I’ll take catastrophic. ;)
Still plenty of time for the GOP's chances to crater even more, we got seven months left until people start voting.
Fine with me!
Is Laksha Jain doing the polling?
Yes, it’s him.
CA-GOV:
Another reason why Matt Mahan is not ready to be Governor:
He reluctantly approved of Prop 50 as opposed to the majority of Democrats who did. Similarly, Rep. Sam Liccardo, who filled in Rep. Anna Eshoo’s seat after she retired and endorsed Mahan for Mayor when he first ran, also reluctantly approved of Prop 50.
https://sanjosespotlight.com/silicon-valley-officials-begrudgingly-back-prop-50/