One Republican candidate after another underscores "fealty to Trump" as the cornerstone of their campaign messaging. Has America ever seen anything like this? Except perhaps in the world of televangelists? This cult of personality seems ... so North Korean.
“Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line”. It may not have reached the same personality cult level, but 20 years ago Republicans competed with each other to prove greater fealty to Bush even while he became less and less popular with the general electorate—a pattern that may, repeat may, be repeating itself.
And running as an Elon Musk wannabe, as seen with Garrity as she considers PA-Gov or Sununu re NH-Sen, doesn’t sound like a winning strategy either.
People are also in far bigger information bubbles than in the Bush years. To many conservatives Trump is one of the most popular Presidents of all time; in their mind why WOULDN'T you align with him electorally?
I've thought about this a lot. As awful as the mis-/disinformation machine was during the Dubya and Obama years (mostly Fox and Limbaugh back then), it at least seemed to have SOME overlap with reality. Now, I feel like those forces have just left reality completely, and constructed an alternate reality.
If the poll showing Josh Weil behind Randy Fine a mere 44–48 is accurate, how much greater than Republican turnout would Democratic turnout have to be for Weil to win?
ADVANCED QUESTION: What Election Day turnout relative to Republicans do Democrats need if these additional factors are accurate and taken into account?
– Josh Weil leads 51–43 among those who have already voted via Mail or In-person.
– Voters without party affiliation have been breaking for Weil/Fine 57–34.
– About 38% of likely voters have already cast their ballots.
Don’t get too excited by that poll. There are about 5% more registered Rs already voted than Ds. The spread suggested by that poll simply doesn’t add up. Very likely Fine is already leading the early votes, even he is behind 20pt in the unaffiliated voters.
The district has roughly 2-1 in registration favoring Rs. For Weil to win, the Election Day would have at least as many Ds voting as Rs if not more. If you want translate to turnout rate, that is D turnout rate doubles Rs on EDay.
I am curious, is anyone tabulating the Early Vote in FL-06? (Voting is ongoing, and yet I cannot found this anywhere.) Perhaps similar to what Toby of MGData is doing for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race…
TDB’s Quinn Yeargain shared the tracking link on the Discord server. You should get on there.
Right now, the voted registration advantage stands at R+6pt. If you truly have high to mid teen crossover votes, and low 20pt lead in NPAs, no way the D candidate is ahead.
I bet the final Tuesday result as losing by 15pt. A huge overperformance in a Trump/Waltz+30 district.
If Fine loses in that district, that would be a 5 alarm for the Republicans in the House. Will it cause any of them to publicly break with Trump? Of course not. They’d rather take their chances and lose in the general than get knocked out in the primary.
I think we can expect the margin to be under 15% and probably under 10%. OH-6 is slightly redder and had a worse Democratic candidate in a worse environment, and that election was within 10 points last year.
I think this has all the signs of a KS-04, not GA-06. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A spring election where Democrats are pissed/hair on fire and swing voters are mad at Trump’s chaos, confusion and catastrophe (only after electing him, do they go “wait a minute, I hate Trump”). The Democratic candidate out raises the Republican by a massive margin.
Millions pour into the district from partisan Democrats wanting a way to channel their fury at a Republican trifecta screwing up the country. Republicans are freaked and do a late last minute intervention to save the seat in a race that shouldn’t be close. History may not repeat, but it very often rhymes. Before KS-04 though in 2017 there was also a sign in the northeast that voters are angry and casting their votes against the GOP.
CT SD32 FEB 2017 spring special election with a massive D+24 over performance from the previous presidential election.
PA SD-36 MAR 2025 spring special election with a massive D+16 over performance from the previous presidential election.
Although not initially expecting a close race, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spent $100,000 on advertising in the last week of the campaign, and Republican politicians Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, President Donald Trump, and Vice President Mike Pence recorded robocalls or campaigned in person supporting their nominee Ron Estes.[15][16] On April 10, the Cook Political Report moved the rating of the district to Lean Republican.[17] Estes won the election by 6.2% over political newcomer James Thompson. This not only marked a dramatic shift from the 61.6%–29.6% margin that Pompeo had been re-elected by in the previous year's regularly-scheduled election, but this was also the closest race in the district since incumbent Todd Tiahrt, who held the seat from 1995 to 2011, edged out Democrat Randy Rathburn by 3% in 1996.[18]
Also a mea culpa, apology to all, but especially to Mark. You were right and I was wrong about 2024, all of it (except Florida, take that Chris Bouzy!). I thought voters would vote with their brains, not on their emotions. I was wrong. It seems swing voters only care to safeguard democracy after it helps elect the fox to be in charge of the hen house on a promise to never harm the chickens and to make it better for them.
I will learn from this and grow as a person, but if I was a betting man… Republicans then lost 25 seats from state legislature to congress over the next 2 years of special elections and GOP picked up just 4. Democrats won’t win, but they’ll make it closer than it should be which sparks a wave of Democratic activism that flips downballot seats anywhere from Trump +50 (think KY, WV ancestral Dems) to a more realistic, but still hugely impressive Trump +15-25 and below seat from red to blue as Republicans are happy and stay home. Will history rhyme this time? Only time will tell.
Probably not great. They're aligned with the self-explanatory YouTube channel Red Eagle Politics. At least there's the satisfaction of knowing they're not happy with the results here.
Yesterday, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that former president Jair Bolsonaro must stand trial alongside seven close allies. They are facing criminal prosecution over an alleged coup plot to overturn his 2022 election loss. Bolsonaro faces political oblivion and a possible jail sentence of more than 40 years.
The far-right populist, who governed Brazil 2019–2022, was charged last month after a two-year investigation into the fallout from the election loss to his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – a loss that Bolsonaro never formally conceded.
NOTE: Already in 2023, Brazil’s Supreme Court barred Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years after finding he'd "undermined democracy by making false claims" about Brazil's voting system.
Makes sense. Her seat would be more vulnerable than the two in Florida. Losing a house special election with such a small majority would not be a good look for them and would impede legislation as well.
Presumably they are waiting to see what happens Tuesday. If the special is close enough or if we win I could see her nomination being dropped.
Unfortunately for us they actually seem to be learning from prior mistakes.
I would be curious though if Stefanik's image will take a hit as a result of being nominated as Ambassador to the UN and if that will make her race in 2026 harder than it was in previous races. Not arguing she'd lose if she remains and runs for re-election but I wonder.
As far as I understand, the NY-21st Congressional District has a R+8 or R+9 rating last I checked while Stefanik won re-election with 22% points.
It’s not just Canada’s Liberals. In Norway, the ruling Labor Party was set to be trounced in this autumn’s parliamentary election. Now, thanks to Trump, their fortunes are looking very bright, indeed!
If only America had recognized how detestable he is before the election.
Although, bad as we are on this front I guess it's some solace that the rest of the developed world's nations also had to see him back in office before they changed their own voting patterns too.
If Stefanik is going to run for re-election, I recommend Ruben Gallego be summoned to campaign for the respective Democratic challenger who gets nominated.
Gallego says he attended Harvard at the same time as Stefanik and I believe had her as a classmate. He’s been blunt in saying Stefanik became soulless when she declared her allegiance to Trump.
Gallego is being charitable to his classmate with that description. The speed with which she pivoted from Never-Trump "moderate" to full MAGA clearly indicates that she's never had any moral convictions whatsoever. (See also: Vance, James David)
I don’t know what Stefanik was like back in college but Gallego did say he and her were friends. I believe in the early years they were in the House that is.
Of course, to your point, anyone in the GOP in Stefanik’s position could be “friends” with Gallego or whoever else but that may be more cordial relations at best. On the other hand, Stefanik in her earlier years in the House was pretty moderate on the environment.
I’d feel bad for her if she hadn’t sold her soul. That sucks to get the job and then not get the job bc of outside considerations.
What’s more important is that seems to derive from them losing the PA state senate election along FL-6 now looking bad, The theme for the last decade+ has been Dems over-perform in special elections and we’ve flipped her district before.
I spose this is karma. She thought she could get in the good graces of the Trump regime, sucked up to them and now she can’t get the promotion she wants bc turns out they all suck.
The crazy part is that Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney were more conservative than Elise Stefanik when they were serving in the House. Trump is of course not popular with neoconservatives, Bill Kristol and John Bolton included.
Goes to show it’s not required to be more to the right to kiss Trump’s ass regardless if a promotion is there or not.
David Nir's description remains evergreen (and this was during the Tea Party era, pre-Trump!):
"It’s important to remember that to remain a member in good standing of the conservative movement, it isn’t enough just to vote a certain way. You have to evidence a very particular tribal belonging – you need to hate the right people, be ignorant of the right facts, be fearful of the right bogeymen, and be arrogant about the whole enterprise. If you somehow fail this tribal litmus test, it doesn’t matter how right-wing you are."
I just think with anyone who is truely moderate, there's traditionally been a greater degree of independent thinking than if they're more conservative. The more conservative, the more rigid the politician is.
Democrats are grateful to have many bright and intelligent centrist and moderate politicians in the House and Senate who aren't being tribal.
Some of it may just be realizing that losing one vote in the house even temporarily is a dumb idea but if electoral considerations played a role at all that is crazy this is a 60-39 Trump seat.
One Republican candidate after another underscores "fealty to Trump" as the cornerstone of their campaign messaging. Has America ever seen anything like this? Except perhaps in the world of televangelists? This cult of personality seems ... so North Korean.
“Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line”. It may not have reached the same personality cult level, but 20 years ago Republicans competed with each other to prove greater fealty to Bush even while he became less and less popular with the general electorate—a pattern that may, repeat may, be repeating itself.
And running as an Elon Musk wannabe, as seen with Garrity as she considers PA-Gov or Sununu re NH-Sen, doesn’t sound like a winning strategy either.
People are also in far bigger information bubbles than in the Bush years. To many conservatives Trump is one of the most popular Presidents of all time; in their mind why WOULDN'T you align with him electorally?
Some people are in big information bubbles – others in huge disinformation bubbles. There’s a world of difference.
I've thought about this a lot. As awful as the mis-/disinformation machine was during the Dubya and Obama years (mostly Fox and Limbaugh back then), it at least seemed to have SOME overlap with reality. Now, I feel like those forces have just left reality completely, and constructed an alternate reality.
FLORIDA – QUESTION for election math nerds
If the poll showing Josh Weil behind Randy Fine a mere 44–48 is accurate, how much greater than Republican turnout would Democratic turnout have to be for Weil to win?
ADVANCED QUESTION: What Election Day turnout relative to Republicans do Democrats need if these additional factors are accurate and taken into account?
– Josh Weil leads 51–43 among those who have already voted via Mail or In-person.
– Voters without party affiliation have been breaking for Weil/Fine 57–34.
– About 38% of likely voters have already cast their ballots.
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/728263-poll-shows-cd-6-special-election-within-margin-of-error/
Don’t get too excited by that poll. There are about 5% more registered Rs already voted than Ds. The spread suggested by that poll simply doesn’t add up. Very likely Fine is already leading the early votes, even he is behind 20pt in the unaffiliated voters.
The district has roughly 2-1 in registration favoring Rs. For Weil to win, the Election Day would have at least as many Ds voting as Rs if not more. If you want translate to turnout rate, that is D turnout rate doubles Rs on EDay.
I am curious, is anyone tabulating the Early Vote in FL-06? (Voting is ongoing, and yet I cannot found this anywhere.) Perhaps similar to what Toby of MGData is doing for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race…
https://nitter.poast.org/TobyMGData
TDB’s Quinn Yeargain shared the tracking link on the Discord server. You should get on there.
Right now, the voted registration advantage stands at R+6pt. If you truly have high to mid teen crossover votes, and low 20pt lead in NPAs, no way the D candidate is ahead.
I bet the final Tuesday result as losing by 15pt. A huge overperformance in a Trump/Waltz+30 district.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TETsNiLSbsRTu0THuWi70HA4UVqKJFG_mhs-w_tZM80/htmlview
Many thanks!
I predict Fine-Weil will end up just like Ossoff-Handel with the R just squeaking by in a district that was not created to be close.
If Fine loses in that district, that would be a 5 alarm for the Republicans in the House. Will it cause any of them to publicly break with Trump? Of course not. They’d rather take their chances and lose in the general than get knocked out in the primary.
I don’t think it’ll be that close. But given the district’s recent voting patterns, a margin under 20% may be a positive indicator.
I think we can expect the margin to be under 15% and probably under 10%. OH-6 is slightly redder and had a worse Democratic candidate in a worse environment, and that election was within 10 points last year.
Not going to be like that. OH06 last year had extremely low turnout, less than 60k total votes.
FL06 early votes by eod yesterday already exceeded 70k. We probably will see total votes in the range of some 100-150k.
This district is far more red; if it's even single digits that is a TERRIBLE result for Republicans.
I think this has all the signs of a KS-04, not GA-06. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A spring election where Democrats are pissed/hair on fire and swing voters are mad at Trump’s chaos, confusion and catastrophe (only after electing him, do they go “wait a minute, I hate Trump”). The Democratic candidate out raises the Republican by a massive margin.
Millions pour into the district from partisan Democrats wanting a way to channel their fury at a Republican trifecta screwing up the country. Republicans are freaked and do a late last minute intervention to save the seat in a race that shouldn’t be close. History may not repeat, but it very often rhymes. Before KS-04 though in 2017 there was also a sign in the northeast that voters are angry and casting their votes against the GOP.
CT SD32 FEB 2017 spring special election with a massive D+24 over performance from the previous presidential election.
PA SD-36 MAR 2025 spring special election with a massive D+16 over performance from the previous presidential election.
Although not initially expecting a close race, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spent $100,000 on advertising in the last week of the campaign, and Republican politicians Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, President Donald Trump, and Vice President Mike Pence recorded robocalls or campaigned in person supporting their nominee Ron Estes.[15][16] On April 10, the Cook Political Report moved the rating of the district to Lean Republican.[17] Estes won the election by 6.2% over political newcomer James Thompson. This not only marked a dramatic shift from the 61.6%–29.6% margin that Pompeo had been re-elected by in the previous year's regularly-scheduled election, but this was also the closest race in the district since incumbent Todd Tiahrt, who held the seat from 1995 to 2011, edged out Democrat Randy Rathburn by 3% in 1996.[18]
Also a mea culpa, apology to all, but especially to Mark. You were right and I was wrong about 2024, all of it (except Florida, take that Chris Bouzy!). I thought voters would vote with their brains, not on their emotions. I was wrong. It seems swing voters only care to safeguard democracy after it helps elect the fox to be in charge of the hen house on a promise to never harm the chickens and to make it better for them.
I will learn from this and grow as a person, but if I was a betting man… Republicans then lost 25 seats from state legislature to congress over the next 2 years of special elections and GOP picked up just 4. Democrats won’t win, but they’ll make it closer than it should be which sparks a wave of Democratic activism that flips downballot seats anywhere from Trump +50 (think KY, WV ancestral Dems) to a more realistic, but still hugely impressive Trump +15-25 and below seat from red to blue as Republicans are happy and stay home. Will history rhyme this time? Only time will tell.
New - Wisconsin supreme Court poll
🔵 Crawford 50% (+8)
🔴 Schmiel 42%
Socal #B - 500 LV - 3/26
Link? I’m not finding this poll and the details via DuckDuckGo.
https://bsky.app/profile/politicalpolls.bsky.social/post/3llecsw3ha22e
How good was SoCal polling?
Probably not great. They're aligned with the self-explanatory YouTube channel Red Eagle Politics. At least there's the satisfaction of knowing they're not happy with the results here.
ENVIOUS OF BRAZIL!
Yesterday, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that former president Jair Bolsonaro must stand trial alongside seven close allies. They are facing criminal prosecution over an alleged coup plot to overturn his 2022 election loss. Bolsonaro faces political oblivion and a possible jail sentence of more than 40 years.
The far-right populist, who governed Brazil 2019–2022, was charged last month after a two-year investigation into the fallout from the election loss to his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – a loss that Bolsonaro never formally conceded.
NOTE: Already in 2023, Brazil’s Supreme Court barred Bolsonaro from running for office for eight years after finding he'd "undermined democracy by making false claims" about Brazil's voting system.
(My edit/rewrite, more here:)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/26/bolsonaro-trial-coup-brazil-supreme-court
Maybe no NY special at all. Stefanik's nomination may be pulled https://x.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1905278270855147687
Things must be looking even worse for the FL house races next week if Stefanik is getting pressured to stay in her seat.
I mean, I'd like to think that, but her nomination was dumb back in January given House margins.
Makes sense. Her seat would be more vulnerable than the two in Florida. Losing a house special election with such a small majority would not be a good look for them and would impede legislation as well.
Presumably they are waiting to see what happens Tuesday. If the special is close enough or if we win I could see her nomination being dropped.
Unfortunately for us they actually seem to be learning from prior mistakes.
I would be curious though if Stefanik's image will take a hit as a result of being nominated as Ambassador to the UN and if that will make her race in 2026 harder than it was in previous races. Not arguing she'd lose if she remains and runs for re-election but I wonder.
As far as I understand, the NY-21st Congressional District has a R+8 or R+9 rating last I checked while Stefanik won re-election with 22% points.
Pity. I was thinking there was a snowball’s chance in Mar-a-Lago that Hakeem Jeffries would become Speaker before year’s end.
Meanwhile north of the border: https://cultmtl.com/2025/03/new-canadian-election-poll-projects-that-pierre-poilievre-will-lose-his-seat/
Karma indeed, if it happens.
Thank you, Donald Trump! Canada’s Liberal Party wouldn’t be headed towards a landslide election without the help of your arrogant insanity.
Fine with me!
Yes to Justin Trudeau being out as PM but with Mark Carney being PM, it’s a whole different ball game now.
It’s not just Canada’s Liberals. In Norway, the ruling Labor Party was set to be trounced in this autumn’s parliamentary election. Now, thanks to Trump, their fortunes are looking very bright, indeed!
Let’s go Trump, let’s go! Let’s go Trump, let’s go! /s
If only America had recognized how detestable he is before the election.
Although, bad as we are on this front I guess it's some solace that the rest of the developed world's nations also had to see him back in office before they changed their own voting patterns too.
this would be the most hilarious outcome
EKOS is Liberal leaning pollster. The margin won’t be that big.
And there it goes. No NY special https://x.com/haleytalbotcnn/status/1905318734262108294
Someone said she was posting retrospectives on her time in the House as late as this morning.
Then someone decided to pull this on her: https://youtu.be/Rc_HrPu4Cl0?si=CyZDuPEUlvs3uvj_
Has a special election date been called already? Had she submitted a resignation letter? Or does this just go away suddenly
No. No. Yes.
If Stefanik is going to run for re-election, I recommend Ruben Gallego be summoned to campaign for the respective Democratic challenger who gets nominated.
Gallego says he attended Harvard at the same time as Stefanik and I believe had her as a classmate. He’s been blunt in saying Stefanik became soulless when she declared her allegiance to Trump.
Gallego is being charitable to his classmate with that description. The speed with which she pivoted from Never-Trump "moderate" to full MAGA clearly indicates that she's never had any moral convictions whatsoever. (See also: Vance, James David)
I don’t know what Stefanik was like back in college but Gallego did say he and her were friends. I believe in the early years they were in the House that is.
Of course, to your point, anyone in the GOP in Stefanik’s position could be “friends” with Gallego or whoever else but that may be more cordial relations at best. On the other hand, Stefanik in her earlier years in the House was pretty moderate on the environment.
I’d feel bad for her if she hadn’t sold her soul. That sucks to get the job and then not get the job bc of outside considerations.
What’s more important is that seems to derive from them losing the PA state senate election along FL-6 now looking bad, The theme for the last decade+ has been Dems over-perform in special elections and we’ve flipped her district before.
I spose this is karma. She thought she could get in the good graces of the Trump regime, sucked up to them and now she can’t get the promotion she wants bc turns out they all suck.
The crazy part is that Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney were more conservative than Elise Stefanik when they were serving in the House. Trump is of course not popular with neoconservatives, Bill Kristol and John Bolton included.
Goes to show it’s not required to be more to the right to kiss Trump’s ass regardless if a promotion is there or not.
David Nir's description remains evergreen (and this was during the Tea Party era, pre-Trump!):
"It’s important to remember that to remain a member in good standing of the conservative movement, it isn’t enough just to vote a certain way. You have to evidence a very particular tribal belonging – you need to hate the right people, be ignorant of the right facts, be fearful of the right bogeymen, and be arrogant about the whole enterprise. If you somehow fail this tribal litmus test, it doesn’t matter how right-wing you are."
For sure!
I just think with anyone who is truely moderate, there's traditionally been a greater degree of independent thinking than if they're more conservative. The more conservative, the more rigid the politician is.
Democrats are grateful to have many bright and intelligent centrist and moderate politicians in the House and Senate who aren't being tribal.
Florida 06
🔵 Weil 44%
🔴 Fine 41%
🔴 Current Republican seat
Fabrizio #A
https://bsky.app/profile/politicalpolls.bsky.social/post/3llfbczb5ik2k
Sounds like a close race!
Here’s some Washington Post analysis of the pullback regarding Stefanik and NY-21. Read the whole piece and see who gets a credit for the data used.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/27/stefanik-nomination-pulled-republicans-house/
Hey they referenced us.
Some of it may just be realizing that losing one vote in the house even temporarily is a dumb idea but if electoral considerations played a role at all that is crazy this is a 60-39 Trump seat.
How did Trump win NY-21 by 21% points? Last I checked, this is a R+8 or R+9 district.
If Trump won NY-21 by this much last year, the PVI should certainly change, making it either a Likely Republican or Solid Republican district.