| District |
|---|
| AL HD-10 (March 27) |
| CT HD-148 (February 28) |
| FL HD-35 (January 16) |
| ME HD-45 (June 13) |
| MN HD-54 (March 19) |
| MN HD-104 (December 05) |
| NH HD-50 (November 07) |
| NH HD-112 (September 19) |
| NH HD-157 (February 21) |
| NY HD-27 (September 12) |
| NY HD-77 (February 13) |
| PA HD-21 (September 19) |
| PA HD-32 (February 07) |
| PA HD-35 (February 07) |
| PA HD-163 (May 16) |
| WI HD-24 (June 18) |
| MA SD-10 (November 07) |
| OK SD-32 (December 12) |
| PA SD-27 (January 31) |
| WI SD-8 (April 04) |
Have Democrats “overperformed” in special elections recently? If they have, how much confidence should we have that this overperformance heralds a strong result in November 2024? Some attempt to answer this by comparing recent special election results to Joe Biden’s performance within the same geography back in 2020. Here, I’ll take a simpler approach: I’ll look at how Democrats have been doing at the same level of office from general to special – particularly, in state legislative general and special elections that have occurred from November 2022 to the special elections that have occurred since then – to see if Democratic prospects really have been improving over the past couple of years. (See this previous post for more details on the full dataset I’m using here)
In November 2024, there will be 59 state legislators across the county on the ballot who entered office via a special election of some kind. Of them, 46 have a “direct comparison” available in the past – i.e., they won a special election in a district that was enacted in time for the 2022 midterm elections.
But in practice, only a few of these are ripe for analysis in that they have * A competitive election special election * A competitive general election * Include a Democrat against a Republican in both cases * Occurred in the same geography in both the special and the general
In many cases, redistricting either wasn’t yet complete or was being reshuffled by subsequent legal challenges. Five Virginia special elections took place as a result of redistricting but prior to the November 2023 general election - i.e., we have both a special election outcome and a general election outcome, just in the reverse order from most of the other races here (not to mention several of those races ended up being noncompetitive, anyway). The Kentucky state legislative maps were still up in the air when its state legislative special elections occurred, Georgia’s weren’t settled yet, and Rhode Island still had time prior to its constitutional deadline to enact new maps. Of the 59 special elections we’ve had in the past year, just 26 were competitive along with having a preceding competitive election within the same district, 22 were between the major parties, with just 20 ending up in a Dem vs. Rep general election as opposed to, say, Dem vs. Dem. Among all these special elections, 3 went from being uncontested to contested from general to special. Fully 24 were uncontested in the general but uncontested in the follow-up special election, 7 were uncontested in both elections. In total, these are the eighteen “clean case” specials we’ve had in state legislatures since 2022:
So that’s not a lot of data, but lets try and make it sing without resorting to torture. The following chart shows turnout decline from the general election in that district to the subsequent special election, as the percent point decline from the most recent general election turnout for the exact same office in the exact same district over time. This chart only includes races where the two major parties were on the ballot both in the general and the special election in that district, so it excludes some races where, say, an incumbent ran unopposed but was proceeded by a special election contested by both parties, where either or both races were uncompetitive, etc. This excludes, for example, the much-watched race for Tennessee’s 86th state legislative seat, whose incumbent was expelled from the chamber as part of the GOP war on voters, as he faced only a minor Independent challenger (and there are plenty of other abnormal elements of that race, anyway!). Among those 20 races, turnout was just 38 percent of what it had been in the prior general election.
While I’ll note that two of the three competitive partisan flips that have happened in the past year had below-average drops in turnout, I’ll not dignify N=3 with further analysis. Note that I’ve sorted these results by district, not date, because I think people look for districts and not dates in charts like this.
On the key question, it is true that Democrats have improved on their past performance in special elections over the past year – but those who say Democrats have “systematically” overperformed are exaggerating a little. The average general to special election performance improvement for Democrats in state legislature races since the most recent general election has been almost exactly 2 percent. In the seventeen D-vs-R competitive state legislative special elections that have happened since November 2022, in districts that are identical from the general to the special, that were contested by both major parties, etc., Democrats improved on their past performance in eleven of them.
(And no – turnout drop-off and change in Democratic performance aren’t correlated, with a statistically insignificant p < 0.48 in a bivariate regression, which I’ll not be dignifying with a chart)
In my day job (and hobbies… and side projects… and social life…) I try to get Democrats elected. I am delighted when it happens. But its hard to argue these results herald much for November 2024. As Hal Malchow points out in his latest book, campaign effects are magnified at lower levels of office – i.e., whatever it is that causes Democrats to overperform at the local level are simply not arithmetically capable of changing outcomes much at higher levels of office. Whatever gets a Democratic state legislator from 0 to 2 percent would, on average, take a Democratic president from 0 to 0.02 percent, and so on.
Its great that we’re overperforming in special elections. We’re still going to have to work our asses off in the general.
(Author’s note: This post has been periodically updated to reflect additional special election outcomes, most recently on March 27, 2024)