WOO! BLUE WAVE, BABY!
Just gonna take a victory lap here...(note: platz eins means first place in german)
Okay, so let's get into it. I know I just started out really excited and screaming BLUE WAVE, but I'm not gonna lie, a blue wave was expected. Republicans control the federal government, and that's gonna drive the democrats to overperform. The real question is: does this actually mean anything? Everyone is reading the tea leaves on this, and me? I'm a bit cooler on this, despite my initial burst of excitement. Honestly, these results, while good for democrats, are mundane. Like, I will say democrats overperformed, sometimes massively, but they didn't overperform so much massively across the country that this really serves as the repudiation that Trump deserves. Given the crap he's doing, we need like Reagan 1984 margins on this guy. And yet, again, this is just the dems getting their mojo back after 2024 and returning to the baseline give or take a few points. Let's go into details. (Results here).
Virginia Governor's race
Spanberger (D) won by 15. She was supposed to win by 10. That is a solid margin of victory. A bit higher than expected, but hey, I'll take it. I guess here it kinda was a repudiation of the republicans. Still, it wasn't that insane.
VA Lt Governor
Hashmi (D) won by about 11. Now this is significant because I only had her ahead by 4. But too be fair polling for the Lt Governor's race was pretty sparse, with a lot of polling having her winning by like 1-2. One had her win by 9, which was in line with what we got, but yeah, it was expected to be a bit closer.
VA Attorney General
Jay Jones (D) won by about 6. This is the one race I predicted wrong. Polling had the republican ahead by 1, although I did note that there was a significant tightening in the last few days of the race, indicating a blue shift last minute. This instinct proved to be correct. Of course, any time I go by instinct like in 2024, I end up making an idiot out of myself, so I just let the data talk, and yeah, the dems overperformed by 7 here. Solid win here. And if anything really pushes back against republicans it's this.
NJ Governor
Mikie Sherrill (D) won by 13. She was only expected to win by 3. So this was a crushing victory for the democrats here. Still, given this is NJ, this is a regression to the norm. D+13 is like the natural state of NJ. If anything was weird it's them only going D+6 last year.
And let's talk about that in the context of virginia too. Virginia these says is what I'd call a likely D state. Ya know, D+5-10, normally D+8. So spanberger wins by 15, that's a healthy margin, but given I see D+8 or so as its natural environment these days, 15 isnt that crazy, and neither is 11, or 6 in the more competitive race. That speaks of a stronger D environment than we've had, but is it really that much crazier than 2017 or 2018 during trump's first term? Not really. The point is, yes, it speaks to voters being not happy with the GOP, but again, this is what happens when republicans are in office. Dems do better. And when dems are in office it goes the other way. Hence why I'm reluctant to read the tea leaves on this.
NYC Mayor
WOO!!! MAMDANI WINS! You see you silly centrists, the people want PROGRESSIVES (sorry, I just had to take a lap there given that's what centrists sound like when they win). However, he only won by like...8-9? Given he was supposed to win by 14, what happened? Well, in the polls I derived my data from, the exact spread was Mamdani- 46, Cuomo- 32, and Sliwa- 16. What ended up happening? Mamdani got 50, Cuomo 42, and Sliwa 7. So, Mamdani overperformed by 4. Cuomo overperformed by 10, and Sliwa underperformed by 9. Put another way, Trump endosing Cuomo to stop Mamdani led to Cuomo to underperform, Sliwa to collapse, and the margins to shrink. Still, our boy pulled it off.
So...what does this "mean"? Does it mean progressives are ascendant across the country? Well, this is an important battle to win within the democratic party, but NYC is also deep blue, so a socialist winning here isnt really THAT crazy. AOC is from NYC too. And honestly, the party only halfheartedly backed him. It's been noted in the news that the dem leaders really didnt give a full throated endorsement and didnt even say who they voted for. Why? They're centrists like Cuomo.
Still, I do want to give a lesson on how the left can win on politics here. Note the results. It was primarily between Mamdani, an outright socialist, and Cuomo, a corrupt centrist who is NORMALLY a dem standard bearer. The dems normally run Cuomos in the party and tell us that we have to vote for them or get the republican. but here, we had the left go full on assault mode, where the REPUBLICANS including TRUMP rallied around the same centrists the dems normally run. And that's what the overton window should be in the country. We need a battle of ideas between a progressive left that's like CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE and centrists who are like NO NO NO but arent crazy regressive. I keep saying it, democrats are actually the real conservatives and the "conservatives" are weirdo progressives. If we want society to function well, we need the overton window to be a balance of progressives and centrists. The progressives are trying to improve things, and the centrists check them to make sure they dont go too far or do something too stupid. We DONT want to be on the other side of that, which is where we are nationally, where the republicans are die hard REGRESSIVES and the left is like the last bastion of defense at defending democracy and sanity itself. Nationally, we're on the opposite side of things and that's a very bad place to be. In reality, we want something between the centrist dems and the most socialist progressives. That's probably the sweet spot for the overton window and NYC is nailing it. The rest of the country, well, we're screwed, in part because we run centrist dems no one likes while the GOP is pushing batcrap insane ideas that only 30% of the country actually likes but 50% vote for for some reason.
CA Prop 50
Seems to have a commanding 29 point margin toward yes (so gerrymander the F out of the state).
PA Supreme Court Retentions
All 3 are retained by a margin of 23. Nice try, GOP, nice try, but the voters saw through that.
As far as why I was so far off on that one....well, I only had 1 poll to go off of. It had radically different results for registered voters vs likely voters (RV was 4-10, LV was 10-17), and then it overperformed that. THis DOES seem to send a message to the GOP given this was a very bitter partisan fight. And there was a lot of uncertainty here about what would happen, although it has been noted that judicial retentions are very rarely "no." The GOP tried here, but they got draxed, to use a Kyle term.
Cincinnati Mayoral Election
I didnt predict this one, but apparently JD Vance's brother ran for mayor of Cincinnati. Current results are 78-22 in the democrat's favor, and I just gotta say, HAHAHA! LOSER!
One might wanna interpret this as a referendum on Trump, but given the margins on other cities, they ALL looked like that, because cities are very urban and democratic leaning. So might not really speak that much about Vance's lack of popularity. Still, it's funny to see a relative of the VP get BTFOed by such a huge margin.
What can we derive from this?
Again it was a very good night for democrats. polling had this mostly sweeping in the first place and they swept even harder than expected, BUT...again, none of this was really unexpected. Even the Jay Jones upset was like "eh...this has a 40% shot at happening." It was a blue wave year, but that's to be expected. THe real question is, is this really a big enough blue wave to send a message to the GOP? And I dont think it is. I also dont think this is evidence of some realignment in the democratic party toward progressivism at large just because Mamdani won in NYC. Really...the results are largely within the range of expectations for the most part, although I couple races did surprise me to some degree. But really, if we want to sent a message, we need more than this. We need FDR style margins here, or Reagan style margins. Like 60-40 being the norm, not just happening in D+20-30 blue states in the first place. It was a good night from democrats, but are the GOP gonna learn from this? Probably not. And are the dems gonna learn from 2024? Probably not. They won like this in 2017 and 2018 and were really snotty over it. Hence why I took an extra victory lap over Mamdani winning, since the centrists are so insufferable when they win. But yeah. Standard blue wave year in response to a republican presidency. Nothing too out of the ordinary. We've seen these patterns hold steady since the 1990s, with the exception of the early 2000s when 9/11 happened. When the republicans take over government, democrats do better. When the democrats take over government, republicans do better. As such, Im cautious to actually see this as a massive repudiation of the GOP. Quite frankly, given how bad the GOP is governing, we really SHOULD see FDR style margins if the American electorate were sane and educated, but they're not...so...instead we get a more normal blue wave. A strong one at that, but nothing that screams it being so unprecedented it speaks of the GOP's imminant doom. Seriously, we should be like the GOP in 1977 or the dems in 1929 right now. That's how bad Trump is governing. A more normal year aint really a good sign here, although it does tell us democracy aint dead yet. And as long as that's the case, we still have hope of turning this ship around.
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