Republicans Lose a Bellwether Race in New York's 19th Congressional District, Indicating the Red Wave May Be Losing Power

The Republican was claimed to be mildly favored in this race, but wound up losing by four points.

It's a strange situation. This was not a primary, but a special election to fill a vacated seat. But, due to redistricting, in November the Democrat will be running in a neighboring district and the Republican, Marcus Molinaro, will be facing a different Democrat, one who just one a primary to run in November, but was not previously an elected Congressman.

So, one could say, what does it matter?

And maybe voters thought that way.

Maybe. But every close race is a test of voter enthusiasm, even if it is only for a four month stint, and the left got its voters out more than the right did.

But the leftwing media is overselling the idea that this was really the Republican's seat to lose. They keep saying "Trump won this district in 2016 by ten points."

Uh, okay, but Biden won it in 2020, which seems more recent, no?

But while the district had previously voted for Trump and the Republicans were given a slight advantage in this race, they voted for Biden in 2020 and voted for the Democrat who was vacating the seat by 11 points in 2020. So the result is not out of line with that prior result.

Still, in a real "wave" year, one might have expected the Republican to win. I wouldn't say the loss tells us a lot but it does seem to mean the red wave, at least at the moment, will not be as big as we had hoped it would be.

Nick Arama thinks that Democrats are cherry-picking their evidence:

Democrats are also ignoring all the other signs like the generic ballot numbers, GOP being red hot in Nevada, the conservative wins in Florida, and the weight of history favoring the GOP.

The links for the evidence he cites are at his article, linked above.

Bonchie thinks that what's going on is that blue states are bluer and red states are redder. He points to Florida as evidence:

John Couvillon @WinWithJMC

This is yet another example (I won't gloat - PROMISE) of the reality that there is an organic level of interest in voting on primary day that is NOT wholly dependent on a competitive race for Governor and Senator. Which will be apparent when I post a comparison to 2018

So for the preliminary two party vote, when compared to 2018, here's what I have:

2018: 3141K voted (1519K Dem, 1622K Rep)
2022: 3241K voted (1524K Dem, 1717K Rep)
Overall turnout: +3%. Dems +0%, Reps +6%

He may be right about that, but the predictions for the bigger red waves depended on the GOP picking up purple districts in red states. If the rule is that blue states get bluer and red states get redder, that won't happen much.

I think this means something but maybe not too much. Certainly, the abortion issue has energized the dispirited left. If anyone was hoping "Maybe they're so dispirited they'll just curl up and accept it" (and I know I was hoping that), those hopes seem to be dashed.

But given this result, and some previous cases of Democrats winning or overperforming in recent elections, as well as the matter of 59% of Kansans voting against a measure to remove state constitution protection for abortion, I would imagine that the GOP will not be talking much, as it was a couple of months ago, about federal bans on abortion.

Frankly I don't even know how we'd justify going from "the federal government has no power to impose its will on this issue on the states" to "the federal government is now deciding national abortion policy" without twisting our backs into corkscrews.

There's a time to reach, and there's a time to consolidate previous victories. This is the time to consolidate previous victories. Most of the conservative justices are old and if we don't keep an eye on getting back political power, the Democrats will just appoint liberal judges to the Court and Roe v. Wade will be switched back on after being switched off for just a couple of years.

And no, they won't respect stare decisis, letting previous precedents determine present cases. Stare decisis is a hustle they get conservative justices to agree to while having no intention of respecting it themselves. You can't remake the world by judicial fiat if you're respecting the laws of the past, can you?

posted by Ace at 12:01 PM

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