No. of Recommendations: 7
It appears Democrat Tom Souzzi will win the seat in the New York 3rd District over Republican Mazi Pilip. The win itself isn't the news story. The news from the race involves the trends seen in voting.
* this district was won by Republican Santos by a 10% margin in 2022, roughly 55/45.
* this district was won by Democrat Souzzi by an 8% margin in 2024, roughly 54/46.
* this district was adjusted in the last redistricting to add additional territory thought to be safe "soccer mom" urban voters thought to be leaning Republican
* this larger metro area consists of multiple districts which Democrats LOST in House races in 2022, leading to the loss of control in the house
* more traditional polling of this race made it seem much closer
Also, in Pennsylvania, the Democrats padded their slim 101-100 majority in the Pennsylvania House to 102-100 by a Democrat winning a special election in a metro Philadelphia district in Bucks County, characterized by locals as a purple district. Another sign of Democrats winning races where voters clearly understand the stakes, even when the race is in middle-class to affluent districts.
Analzying all of these factoids and attempting to read the tea leaves, two things stand out:
1) traditional polling is not accurately reflecting the choices of those who are actually motivated to VOTE
2) it is possible the biggest Trump backers might NOT be motivated to show up in special elections but could still turn out in droves for a November Presidential election, thus making THIS result misleading
Of course, the larger takeaway for ANYONE following this horse race up to the November election is this... Any story in the media that attempts to provide a "balanced" picture that implies the country is on a knife-edge evenly split between Democrats and Republicans is reporting on an America that ceased to exist at least forty years ago. The country is NOT evenly split 50/50 between the two major parties. The actual split as of 2024 is 41% Independent, 31% Democratic and 25% Republican. If pollsters are only asking skewed "R versus D" questions when talking to voters, those skewed questions are going to fail to accurately capture the sentiments of Independents who are annoyed at both parties, making predictions from those polls VERY error prone.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 2
Suozzi, not Souzzi. (Dangit...)
