Democrat Tom Suozzi has won the New York special election to the U.S. House, according to an AP race call. Suozzi will serve out the remainder of the term for former GOP Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from the House last year.
Democrat Tom Suozzi has won the New York special election to the U.S. House, according to an AP race call. Suozzi will serve out the remainder of the term for former GOP Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from the House last year.
Is a “special election” like what we call a “by election” in the Commonwealth?
If so I don’t know how much to read into this. In Parliamentary systems it’s a well known fact that by elections tend to see a swing against the majority. So if the House is Republican controlled, you’d expect a swing towards the Democrats, even if at the next full election it goes back to Republican.
The one spanner in the works with that comparison is the President. In our system, the “government” is formed out of Parliament, so the majority in the House is the same as the party forming Government. Presidential systems don’t have that, so maybe you’d be expecting a swing towards Republicans, in which case this is an even bigger win than it at first seems?
Special elections take place outside of normal election cycles for any number of reasons
Basically special elections are a “we need an election now and can’t wait for the normal time”
Basically, yes.
The thing with George Santos is that he wasn’t kicked out of office by the usual means. He was criminally convicted and then
impeachedexpelled.So in order to ensure that Santos’s constituency is still represented in government, they called an emergency election to pick his replacement. That’s what the special election is, and what other places would call a by-election.
While true, this doesn’t take into account the nature and publicity of Santos’s crimes.
Remember that Santos defrauded and lied to his constituents in such a brazen manner that even Trump would blush, and with none of the cult backing. Santos was a GOP representative, so it makes sense for those pissed at Santos possibly also being pissed at the GOP for letting it happen.
And Santos’s lies got more and more publicity as time went on. It became clear for a lot of people that this guy just wasn’t what they voted for, and the man they did vote for was a complete and utter fabrication.
I think people are reading WAAAAY too much into this. This election took place under very abnormal circumstances. The seat was open because the incumbent was expelled from congress for a variety of crimes and lies that got progressively more insane the longer he was in office. The winning candidate is a fairly conservative Democrat who campaigned heavily on supporting Israel in their war. The losing candidate was from the same party as the crazy person who was expelled and essentially campaigned on the fact thatshe was in the Israeli defense force and is extremely pro Israel.
I don’t think any larger conclusions can be drawn from this race.
Special elections don’t necessarily have any clear trend in and of themselves. The larger trend, and where this is significant, is that elections that occur within a presidential term tend to swing quite hard to the opposite party of that President. This is the main reason why the Republicans currently lead the House, but this effect has been much much smaller than it usually is, and so they have an exceedingly slim majority.
It generally bodes very well for Biden in 2024, because unlike polls, this is a test of the exact demographic, moderately wealthy suburbanites that value boring stability above all else, that he needs to do well with in order to win.
Since we have elections on a regular schedule for Congressional seats, the only way to have a special election is if a seat goes vacant for any reason. So since they are not held on Election Day, turnout can be an issue. People here are used to election day being in November, and may not bother with elections held at odd times during the year.
The media tends to make a big deal out of them because they make for good headlines, but the only trend they really track are whether the issues talked about in the campaign can drive turnout.