Yesterday a special election was held to fill NY-3, the New York congressional district vacated by George Santos after he became only the sixth member of the House of Representatives to ever be ejected from the chamber. The district covers a suburban swathe of Long Island, one which has been trending right over the last decade or so.
If yesterday’s election is anything to go by, the Republican run of good fortune in the New York suburbs might be over. Democrat Tom Suozzi beat Republican Mazi Pilip, and it doesn’t even look like it’s going to be close. Because the suburbs are where the 2024 election will be fought and won, politicos are pouring over the tea leaves this morning to figure out the implications. Here are my takeaways:
This was a special election, and they have different turnout and engagement dynamics to presidential elections. Whichever side does best at getting their most committed activists and voters to the polls generally wins. More engaged and higher-educated voters have a higher propensity to turn out to vote in this sort of election, and nowadays those voters are more likely to vote for the Democrats.
This doesn’t necessarily translate to any advantage in the general election because the composition of the electorate will be completely different. In general elections, many more people vote. Progressives used to live and die by the idea that “if everyone votes, we win.” It’s not at all clear that this is true anymore: in fact, Democrats would probably benefit if overall turnout were lower in November, because low-propensity voters are currently more likely to be Republicans. But given the psychological and practical stakes of any election involving Donald Trump, turnout in November is likely to be high, making yesterday’s result even less predictive.
On the other hand, yesterday’s result shouldn’t be under-rated. Democrats owe much of their recent success to their strength in the suburbs, but Long Island had until now defied that trend. There were plenty of reasons for this, including the strength of the local GOP apparatus and the way in which uber-liberal New York City serves as a convenient foil for right-wing politics. A Democratic win here is a sign of strength.
Nor can the result be dismissed by saying the result was just based on local issues. The election was about local issues, but those issues are actually some of the ones likely to play a big role in November - crime and immigration. Immigration especially loomed large, given the way that the refugee crisis is overtaxing NYC’s public services. Democrat Tom Suozzi adopted an approach which, to quote Politico, “puzzled some Democrats” - he promised that if elected he would work with Republicans in order to strengthen border security. The Biden administration was already leaning hard into this message itself, and you can expect them to double down in the aftermath of this victory.
The scandal of George Santos obviously hung over the race. Santos became one of the most recognizable members of Congress in the country, and for all the wrong reasons. It was harder for the GOP to bounce back after making the major mistake of picking him as a candidate in the first place.
Suozzi’s victory has interesting implications for Congress. Republicans owe their current super-slim majority in the House in large part to their success in suburban NYC districts like NY-3. With Santos gone, Speaker Mike Johnson now can rely on a majority of (by my count) only 218 to 213, making it even harder for Congress to get anything done.
In general, this result will be interpreted as a victory for Bidenism - a moderate, suburban-oriented politics which has led the Democrats to victory after victory since 2020. Regardless of the unpopularity of the president and concerns about his age, the fact is that Democrats keep winning election after election.
But as I wrote after a big round of special elections last year, results like this also carry a warning sign for Biden. Whereas in 2020 he owed his success to being significantly more popular than down-ballot Democratic candidates, now he is significantly less popular than they are (Trump is beating Biden by about 5% in polling of NY-3). Democrats and the Democratic Party are popular. It’s the president who is not. What happens in November - and possibly the future of American democracy - turns on whether he can change that.