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”
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.
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.