Voter Turnout Suggests a Democratic Advantage Heading Into November

Beyond the headline results, Tuesday’s elections in New York and Florida add to the evidence of an emerging trend in the 2022 election cycle: Democrats are consistently outperforming expectations in the post-Dobbs decision era.In New York’s 19th district, the Ulster County executive, Patrick Ryan, a Democrat, defeated the Republican Dutchess County executive, Marcus Molinaro, in a special election to fill the seat Representative Antonio Delgado vacated when he was named lieutenant governor.In the run-up to the election, Mr. Molinaro was a favorite, with the last poll before the election, conducted by Data for Progress, finding him eight points ahead of Mr. Ryan.When the voters went to the polls, though, Mr. Ryan defeated Mr. Molinaro by two points. Although the results are not final, if the current margin holds that would mean there was a 10-point polling miss in the district.Even polls that reported a more conservative lead for Mr. Molinaro, such as a late June survey conducted by Public Policy Polling that indicated a three-point lead, would mean a five-point miss.Drilling into turnout data, it becomes evident that more Democrats voted than anyone was expecting. With about 92.5 percent counted, Mr. Ryan received about 66,000 votes while Mr. Molinaro had about 63,000.A professor of political science at Hamilton College, Philip Klinker, tells the Sun that areas of the 19th district that voted for Democrats in 2020 had higher turnout in the special election than areas that voted for Republicans.He calculated that voter turnout in counties or parts of counties where Mr. Delgado — the Democratic candidate in 2020 — won reported 60 percent lower voter turnout in the special election than in 2020.For comparison, counties or parts of counties where Mr. Delgado lost in his 2020 bid for the seat reported 71 percent lower voter turnout than in 2020.This means that Democratic turnout was better than Republican turnout across the district. Looking at results from New York’s other special election, in the 23rd district, a similar pattern emerges.In the 23rd, congressional staffer Joseph Sempolinski, a Republican, defeated the Tioga County Democratic chairman, Max Della Pia, 53.3 percent to 46.7 percent.The 6.6-point margin is much closer than the district’s 2020 result, which saw the Republican candidate, Congressman Tom Reed, win by a 16.6-point margin.In terms of vote totals, Mr. Sempolinski received nearly 39,000 votes and Mr. Della Pia received just over 34,000 votes, which again represents an unusually strong midterm showing for Democrats.Mr. Klinker says that the only county that supported Democrats in 2020, Tompkins County, reported a 70 percent drop in voter turnout compared to 2020. Other counties in the district, which all supported Republicans in 2020, reported a 79 percent drop in voter turnout.Mr. Klinker argues that these results are part of a growing body of evidence that suggests a voter backlash against the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson.He argues that this was most evident in Kansas, “where voters were intensely focused on just the issue of abortion — no confounding variables.“Now we have the post-Dobbs special elections where Democrats have been highlighting the abortion issue, though other issues and factors can and do intervene,” he tells the Sun.FiveThirtyEight compiled data from pre- and post-Dobbs special elections and calculated the average swing between a district’s background partisan lean and the margin in the special election.They found that in special elections held before the ruling, Republicans outperformed expectations by an average of two points. After the ruling, Democrats outperformed expectations by an average of nine points.Florida’s primary election results have been touted as a counterexample to this narrative of Democratic overperformance. Republicans appear to have reported better turnout than Democrats in one of the only statewide races with primaries on both sides.In the race for agricultural commissioner, about 1.6 million Republicans cast a ballot compared to about 1.4 million Democrats. While Democrats were voting in both Senate and gubernatorial primaries, there was no major Republican primary on the top of the ballot.This suggests that Republican voters in Florida are more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats, a trend running against the results in New York. This is, however, an imperfect comparison.The first complication is that Republicans enjoy a slight advantage in party registration in Florida and should see slightly higher vote totals in most elections. The second is that these primary results also excluded unaffiliated voters, which disproportionately broke for Democrats in the state in 2020.The biggest issue with this comparison, in Mr. Klinker’s opinion, is qualitative. Florida’s elections were primary elections, whereas New York’s were special elections. That means that voters in New York had the opportunity to come out to vote against the other party but Florida voters did not.As it stands, the bulk of the evidence suggests that Democratic support is lined up to exceed expectations in 2022, which — considering the razor thin margins already projected in the House and Senate — could be bad news for the GOP come November.

Voter Turnout Suggests a Democratic Advantage Heading Into November

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