There’s going to be a lot of ink wasted on what happened yesterday. People are going to try and argue that Sherrill and Spanberger prove that moderate Dems win, which I tend to believe in more purple districts and statewide races. Others are going to argue that Mamdani shows that bold progressives win. It’s quite frankly a stupid argument. What kind of Democrat didn’t win? Are there things to learn about 2026 from the data? Yes. Ultimately what you should take away first and foremost from this is that when your actions, be it a trade war, shutting down the government, cutting people’s health care, or yanking their food stamps, end up making people worried about their next meal, their housing, their job, or their health care, you’re probably going to lose. This isn’t ideological. It’s survival.
Terry Fadem and Nadeem Quyyum had basically no resources, and beat the Republican candidates for County Council by over 13,000 and 9,000 votes each. Tara Zrinski meanwhile ran a hard campaign and earned a record breaking margin and became the first woman elected as Northampton County Executive. Jeremy Clark ran hard for his win on the Northampton County Court of Common Pleas, while Mark Stanziola was largely outspent in Lehigh County where he won easily. Democrats won the Bucks row offices with moderates, while they won state legislative seats in Virginia with all different candidates. There was no one specific type of Democrat that won tonight. Yes, some types won by more. None were really all that close though. And I can’t come up with a competitive race that they really lost. Nothing really mattered.
Running for office is hard, and the fact that this was simply a unanimous decision tonight doesn’t take away from the achievement of running a successful campaign. These people all put their names and reputations on the line in hopes of winning a race, and I salute them for that. With that said, there’s no deeper message in tonight. Donald Trump went too far, and voters reacted. They both gave large percentages of the vote to Democrats, and turned out in greater numbers than we had ever seen before. If you put your name on the ballot as a Democrat tonight in a place Democrats had any chance to win, you won. If you were a Democrat who crossed over, like Pat Dugan in Philadelphia, Ed Ducal in Allentown, or Roger Maclean in Lehigh County, you got your ass kicked. There was no interest in any of that. Even decently liked Republicans lost races tonight in any county or two that was even moderately purple. This was an outright rejection of Trump. Trump will never again be on the ballot, and Republicans haven’t done well trying to be like Trump when he’s not on the ballot too. Make of that what you will. Last night was far more decisive than any previous beating.
I’ve updated my turnout numbers for Pennsylvania tonight. Unless Election Day way overshoots projections, I believe Tara Zrinski and Josh Siegel will be the new Northampton and Lehigh County Executives. Now we wait.
If we’re being honest, my first election nights are such distant memories that I don’t remember everything about them. I remember watching when Bill Clinton was elected President in 1993. I remember my best friend’s dad’s election nights when he ran for Township Supervisor. Of course, I remember 2000. The first time I was involved myself was 2002. I was a freshman in college and interning on the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign for Ed Rendell for Governor and Ed O’Brien for Congress. I couldn’t even drink yet, not to mention I was recovering from mono, and basically had to watch in horror as the Democratic Party, especially the candidates I looked up to most (those opposing the Iraq War) fell one by one across the country that night. Anger is a helluva fuel though.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the big ones though. Five years ago tonight was the 2020 Biden-Trump election night, a long, long night in which many of you freaked out and lost your minds. It was covid, vote-by-mail was new in a lot of places, and well, it was competitive. It took until Saturday to finally declare Joe Biden had won, despite a record breaking number of votes, and maybe that is what we should remember from that night. It was supposed to be the most consequential election of our time. It may have been, but how is not as obvious now as many of us thought it would be. Instead it looks like the pause button on the direction of our times, a moment when Democrats didn’t Democrat away the election and for a brief moment the Trump momentum was stopped. It was a brief moment though.
Four years earlier was quite a different story. I wasn’t as shocked Trump won as most people. It also didn’t take days to decide. It was clear by about 11pm that this was not 2012, the math wasn’t foregone, and we were in for a surprise. That hotel room in Elizabeth City was tense as hell. Especially when I was being told I had to be ready for recounts the next morning for Governor and State House.
Of course there were happier times. 2008 in Harrisburg capped off just a week of happiness after the Phillies won the World Series. The truth is that I didn’t love Harrisburg. Everyone there is go alone to get along, and I’m not. Neither really was our team at HDCC though. We gained seats that year, in spite of the polarization of that Obama electorate and the uphill battle of Bonusgate indictments. No one matched for many years, until the maps were drawn in a much more fair and equitable way.
2012 in New Jersey was less in question, but equally fun. I look back on it differently since the top of our ticket got into legal trouble. I still really liked the people I worked with though. It was an experience I learned a lot from.
Want a weird election night? January 5th, 2020, in Georgia. I was in Cobb County doing a paid canvass for the DSCC. We had no real way to know what would happen the next day in Washington, DC, or that half the country wouldn’t care about it, because that night the biggest story in the country was those Georgia Senate run-offs. And being in Metro Atlanta was amazing. It was as fun as any place in the world could have been during COVID.
Ok, so Super Tuesday of 2020- the best. I had Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Oklahoma as the digital organizer, and we won all three. I called my shot on Massachusetts hours earlier and Anita Dunn (no, she doesn’t know me or anything) told me I was crazy. Well, we put the Elizabeth Warren campaign to a merciful rest that night. I’m proud of that.
The election I’m most proud of was still 2023 though, one of my last ones to date. I only took on Judge Timika Lane that year. Her campaign for Superior Court was always going to be hard, I knew that. We did it though, even if I lost years off of my life from the experience. She’s a great judge and Pennsylvania is better for her service. More importantly, she’s a wonderful friend and I’m grateful to have been a part of it.
Maybe the weirdest was 2022. I was working at a mail firm and most of my work was on the West Coast. So my mornings were quiet and I had no events to really go to. I also live in maybe the most swing place in America, so a rather active campaign was going on around me. It was a weird dichotomy.
I’ve done a couple of Iowa Caucuses. They’re a fun event. Both times, I ended up in a bar with Tim Ryan of Ohio after the event ended. Not just with him, the first time Congressman Rick Nolan and others were along. The second time wasn’t in Des Moines, but Council Bluffs, Iowa with our volunteers. Again, fun times.
I have had more election nights than I can count. And it’s just about time for me to head out to watch results. Enjoy your nights, stay safe friends, and we’ll talk more about this later.
Nine weeks in the books and we’re kind of, sort of back where we began. Sure, the Broncos are better than we thought. The Colts and Bills are way better than we thought. The Eagles, Bills, Bucs, and Rams are as good as we thought. It’s no shock Green Bay and San Francisco are here. The Seahawks aren’t shocking, but maybe a bit confusing.
Who has surprised us negatively? The Ravens, but they’re a health issue. Bengals too, but same. Washington and Dallas aren’t so good. I’d say Atlanta too. Those are my surprises so far. Here’s today’s rankings.
It’s Election Day. New Jersey and Virginia will elect Governors. New York City will elect a Mayor. There are state legislative races in a few states. Pennsylvania elects some judges, and maybe re-elects some too. Here in the Lehigh Valley we have Executive races in both counties and Mayoral races in Allentown and Bethlehem, kind of. Are my interested in all of these races? No. Honestly, some of them are probably over now. Others have my attention. What are they?
Will Mamdani reach 50% in New York City? As much as I hate this, the answer should be yes. He is the Democratic nominee in a city that is heavily Democratic. Also, despite what some folks might think, this is not the New York City of Ed Koch or Rudy Giuliani. It’s a very liberal place, one that is probably being pushed left by Trump. The post-Bloomberg city (which is wildly misinterpreted in many ways) isn’t really looking to moderate. Oh sure, Adams did win four years ago, when he beat a collection of also rans and never was. Mamdani is problematic and offensive to me in many ways. The truth is, he’s not to the residents there. AND his opponent is Andrew Cuomo. I think Cuomo would do a better job as Mayor. No one is begging for his return to power in New York though. If he wanted to vindicate himself, he should have stayed in office and fought during the allegations, every prosecutor but one ran away from the report (and that one got dismissed at the first hearing). He didn’t though, and that implies there was some fire to the smoke. He’s damaged goods. Mamdani hitting 50% or not is the interesting part to me, I don’t buy the late polls showing Cuomo surging into the race. I’d love it if he beat this guy, but that ain’t happening.
How many seats do Democrats pick up in the Virginia legislature? I was told by someone who knows that the Virginia Dems are now playing in districts as red as R+10. They probably won’t win those, but if they’re winning out as far as R+5, it’s a sign that the Republicans are in very bad shape for next year. For geographic context, this would mean Democrats winning in places like the Richmond suburbs or the western exurbs of DC. I’d be surprised, but if it’s true, it’s the canary in the coal mine.
What does the red and blue on the map of California look like for Proposition 50? This might not make a lot of sense to you right now, but California moved substantially more red in 2024. Trump did the best of his three runs there. Now, he lost the state handily and particularly got battered in the coastal areas, but he did better. Almost the entirety of the inland areas went for Trump last year and it stretched further towards the coast than normal. Proposition 50 would counteract Republican efforts to gerrymander southern and midwestern red states by re-districting California to eliminate most of the GOP’s seats there. California is one of the biggest delegations the GOP has, even with Texas and Florida gerrymandered. That’s going to end tomorrow, but do they show any life, or are the lights going out there.
Is New Jersey too blue for a MAGA Republican? Setting aside the fact that I think Mikie Sherill has better ideas and excellent experience to be Governor, she didn’t run a great campaign. They tried to run a heavily bio driven campaign, leaning on her credentials as a fighter pilot and woman. That’s so 2018. She’s smart enough and has the right values, but her campaign lacked a North Star, most voters don’t know why and what she wants to do in January. People don’t love over qualified, smart candidates, and let’s be honest, they’re more harsh on women for this. Jack Ciattarelli made clear that he wants to undo the Murphy Administration and he’s the change candidate. Look, that’s easy when you’re the nominee of the party out of power. With that all said, let’s just say he did the mechanics of campaigning better, which is kind of understandable in his second run. He made one gigantic mistake though in so far as I can tell, he took the endorsement of Donald Trump. Trump did way better in New Jersey in 2024, and still lost by 9%. He’d probably lose worse in the 2025 electorate. So even though Ciattarelli may have won “the campaign,” does that matter at all anymore? My guess is no. I’d bet she wins by 3-5%. If she wins by more, maybe literally nothing at all mattered.
Forget the Virginia Governor race unless the result is jaw dropping, who wins the Lt. Governor and Attorney General races? Winsome Earle-Sears missed the memo about the 2024 Election. Part of the reason the “trans issue” popped the way it did against Kamala Harris is she was on video talking about it in a way the public disagreed with. Earle-Sears has run her race on social issues that Virginia voters just aren’t much interested in, and because of that Abigail Spanberger is going to crush her and become Governor. Spanberger wins by at least 7% tonight, and the only real question is if it’s more than 10%. That race wasn’t really interesting, as a good candidate beat a bad one. The fun was in the Lt. Governor and Attorney General races. The Lt. Governor’s race will either elect a Muslim woman, born in India or a gay Republican man. The Republican nominee, John Reid, drew the ire of the state’s Republican Governor, who called on him to drop out when his sexually explicit Tumblr account surfaced in the Spring. Honestly, I’ll pontificate a bit here, Reid should lose for many other reasons, but not that. State Senator Ghazala Hashmi, the Democrat, holds a narrow lead, but doesn’t quite hit 50%. I’m definitely watching that race. That’s an undercard compared to the Attorney General’s race. Incumbent Republican Jason Miyares has been accused of being Trump’s lapdog. Democrat Jay Jones sent texts to a colleague talking about killing the former Republican Speaker of the Virginia House and his kids. Honestly, it’s pretty disgusting. Virginians should not be proud, but I guess they have to choose one of these guys. Of course I’m interested in that.
Are we seeing the future in Pennsylvania? Retention votes were never overly competitive in Pennsylvania. I sincerely hope tomorrow’s is not, because it would basically put us in a permanent state of war over these seats. If this race is close, it suggests that this is our new normal though. I think the permanent campaign is part of why we’re in this national mess. I fear it’s our destiny.
Does anything happen in New Jersey? There’s a lot of folks who will privately tell you nothing will happen in the Garden State’s elections tomorrow. Sherill will win and virtually no seats will switch hands in the legislature. That’s not a bad thing if you’re a Democrat.
Who will win the Lehigh Valley’s County Executive races? As goes PA-7, so goes the nation. A Democratic sweep tomorrow will mean bad things for Ryan Mackenzie next year. Unless we screw it up, and pick a bad candidate.
In recent years, Lehigh County is a different place than it used to be. Even as late as my college years, Lehigh County was considered harder for Democrats to win than Northampton. Boy, that’s changed. Beginning with Don Cunningham and carrying through Tom Mueller and Phil Armstrong, the GOP has been kept out of the County Executive’s seat for 20 years. Something tells me Roger Maclean isn’t the guy to stop that trend, but let’s hold that thought a second.
Right now, Lehigh County turnout looks fairly similar to Northampton County turnout. Likely Election Day voters plus those who have already returned a vote-by-mail ballot come out to 76,788 voters. Democrats hold the edge, 36,677 to 33,170. That’s not an overwhelming blowout. The 6,941 independent and third party voters we are expecting could easily tip this election either way. There are 8,253 vote-by-mail ballots still out though, and Democrats hold an edge of they lean towards the Democrats by 2,487. Basically, this is a mirror image of Northampton County, with Democrats holding an edge of around 3,500 votes and looking to gain through the remaining vote-by-mail ballots. Republicans either need to win a landslide with independent and third party voters, get an unusual number of Democrats to cross over, or need to turn out a lot of unlikely Election Day voters. None of this seems highly likely, but it is notable that the Lehigh County GOP may be in no worse of shape than their Northampton County brethren.
Roger Maclean, like Tom Giovanni, is a former Democrat. I find neither to be overly exciting, but I’m also not ready to say they’re the craziest people the GOP could have ran. Giovanni made his switch many years ago though, and has had time to prove himself to his party’s voters. Maclean basically made his move last week. Will a few thousand unlikely Republican voters make the trip to the polls today to vote for him? I highly doubt it. Will Maclean pull over a substantial number of Democratic voters? That’s probably his hope, but I doubt it happens in this environment. He’s had to straddle appeasing his MAGA base and appealing to moderates this whole race, and that’s going to make this really hard. For Maclean to win this, he’ll probably need a high number of crossover voters and need a blowout with independents. He just didn’t run the kind of campaign that probably does that. Northampton County’s GOP might hold human sacrifices in the Slate Belt somewhere and Lehigh’s version holds witch trials in Schnecksville or something. I’m basically saying their leadership isn’t allowing a whole lot of sanity from their ranks, and that makes it very hard to win these off year races.
There is one more way to look at this race though, and that’s to look at it compared to recent past elections. In 2023, 75,127 people cast a ballot. 51,622 of them voted on Election Day, while 23,123 voted by mail. The Democrats won every statewide judicial race in the County by *at least* 4,999 votes, they swept the Commissioner at-large seats 4-0 with a 4,500 vote margin from their 4th candidate to the GOP’s first, and won both County row office races by more than 8%. They were considerably more competitive in 2021. That year, 74,108 people voted overall, with 51,183 voting on Election Day and 22,214 voting by mail. Those numbers are not wildly different than 2023. The GOP actually won two of the four statewide Judicial seats in the county. They won 2 of the 3 seats on the Court of Common Pleas. They lost the Executive race by only 2,618 votes, a margin that was close enough that Phil Armstrong at one point was conceding that he lost the race. Republicans won 3 of the 5 Commissioner district seats up that year. This at least has to make you stop and pause for a second. It’s not like Glenn Eckhart, who lost a couple of Controller races, is Pat Toomey or Charlie Dent. He almost won though. The turnout wasn’t really much different than 2023, or what I’m predicting today. One has to think then that it was simply who voted in 2021, as opposed to 2023. School board results in Parkland, East Penn, and Southern Lehigh swung pretty hard from 2021 to 2023, so either the voters really changed their mind or they were different voters. Maybe today we’ll answer that. Signs aren’t great for the GOP though. There are already more ballots returned than there were in 2021 or 2023. They’re probably going to get crushed in the mail. They’re down more than 9,700 on registration, not quite as bad as Northampton, but probably too much to take.
My guess is that Democrats win the Executive seat and the GOP wins the Judge seat. Patricia Mulqueen has a record that probably pulls over some Democrats to vote for her, Lehigh County voters do tend to cross lines in judge races. Josh Siegel outspent Roger Maclean by a 10:1 margin and certainly isn’t a heretic to Democratic voters. I think Siegel wins this race by 4-5,000 votes, with independents generally breaking the Democrats way in Lehigh County. What I would watch for, interestingly, is Allentown. Matt Tuerk won the primary by a landslide and the general election never came to fruition then. Will voters show up? Will Latinos continue to slide away from Democrats? How much of that retired Mack Trucks base of white voters will show up for Maclean, who really should be their kind of candidate on paper? If Allentown looks like normal, and Siegel simply holds what he should in the larger suburban towns, this won’t be a nail biter. If a good chunk of the remaining vote-by-mail comes in, Siegel could win this going away.
Larry Holmes turned 76 years old today. He is, without question, one of the top ten, and probably one of the top five heavyweight boxers of all-time, when he was in his prime. He is often overlooked by new fans, in part because he wasn’t a trash talker, but also because his style of boxing was purely fundamental and not the kind of excitement that an Ali or Tyson gave us. One isn’t better than the other, but Larry’s jab worked well for him. So well that he held some variation of the heavyweight championship for 7 years. Among his victories, he defeated Ken Norton, Muhammad Ali, Ernie Shavers, Mike Weaver, Gerry Cooney, Tim Witherspoon, Carl Williams, and Marvis Frazier. He was at 48-0 before the mafia outright robbed him he fell short of tying Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record in his match with Leon Spinks in 1985. Everyone in Easton will tell you “they know” Larry, that’s everybody but me. I actually have met him plenty of times, but that’s different from knowing someone. I do know Larry Jr., and he’s an absolutely great dude (go check out his new cigar bar, Legends, which is opening in downtown Easton). So I know Mr. and Mrs. Holmes did a great job at that.
Is Larry the greatest athlete to ever come out of the Lehigh Valley? He might be. Mario Andretti is the only man to ever win the Indy 500, Daytona 500, and Formula One Championship though, so there’s an argument that he is also a top ten, or even top five athlete of all-time in his sport. Larry has competition to just be the greatest athlete ever to come out of Easton though- Bobby Weaver won the Olympic Gold Medal in Los Angeles in 1984 in freestyle wrestling. It would be really hard to argue against any of them as the best ever. There are competitors though.
Joe Kovacs of Bethlehem Catholic is a three time Olympic Silver Medalist in the Shot Put, and has won two World Championships. Stan Dziedzic of Allen won an Olympic Bronze Medal in Wrestling at the 1976 Olympics, to go with his three NCAA Division II and one Division I championship. Andre Reed of Dieruff is in the Pro Football Hall-of-Fame and started in FOUR Super Bowls. Saquon Barkley obviously won last year’s Super Bowl with the Eagles and was named Offensive Player of the Year. His fellow Whitehall Zephyrs Matt Millen and Dan Koppen won four and two Super Bowls in their NFL careers. Jim Ringo of Phillipsburg won Super Bowl I and another championship on his way to making both the Packers and Eagles Hall-of-Fame. Ned Bolcar of Phillipsburg won an NCAA Championship for Notre Dame’s 1988 team and played in the NFL. Chuck “Concrete” Charlie of Liberty High School was a two way menace for the Eagles and won two championships. Kristen Maloney was an Olympic Bronze Medal winning gymnast out of Pen Argyl. Sandy Koufax is one of the greatest pitchers of all time and resides in the Center Valley area. Darian Cruz wrestled in the 2024 Olympics and finished 5th. Marty Nothstein, long before politics, won an Olympic Silver (’96 Atlanta) and Gold (2000 Sydney) in track cycling. Meredith Sholder of Emmaus played on the 2024 U.S. Olympic Field Hockey team. Curt Simmons from Whitehall pitched on the 1950 NL Champion Phillies and made three All-Star Games. Brian Schneider of Northampton had a long MLB career with the Expos, Nationals, Mets, and Phillies. Anthony Recker of Catasauqua was a catcher for the A’s, Cubs, and Mets. Matt McBride from Liberty appeared for the A’s and Rockies. Aaron Gray of Emmaus had a decent run in the NBA, mostly as a member of the Chicago Bulls. You can’t forget defending Super Bowl Champion Jahan Dotson of Nazareth. Cindy Werley of Emmaus was on the 1996 Olympic Field Hockey Team. Kevin and Kyzir White of Emmaus have had notable NFL careers, with Kyzir playing for the Eagles 2022 Super Bowl team. Tyrese Martin of Allen is on the Brooklyn Nets right now. Damn, this list got long.
One would be really hard pressed to make a Mount Rushmore of Lehigh Valley sports without Larry Holmes, Mario Andretti, Chuck Badnarik, and Bobby Weaver. You could certainly argue for Matt Millen, Andre Reed, Dan Koppen, Saquon Barkley, Marty Nothstein, and Jim Ringo, and I won’t say you’re wrong. Either way, the Easton Assassin has to be on any list, and I hope he had a great birthday.
Anybody who really knows me knows how much I don’t like the Los Angeles Dodgers. I don’t mind that they spend a lot of money. ALL of these teams should spend a lot of money, and I give them credit for doing so. They are a big market and they behave like it, and we should all be happy about that. Every owner in baseball is a billionaire though. At a minimum, they could spend their revenue, which is north of $250 million for every team. For my money, the Dodgers are doing what they should. I just don’t like them because I like Philadelphia. We seem to meet a lot over the last 50 years in the playoffs. I’m not supposed to like them.
The Dodgers are a well built team. They have excellent starting pitching, and depth amongst those starters. They have at least three strong Hall-of-Fame candidates in their lineup. Their bullpen sucked all year, but that’s what the starting depth was there to fix. Yamamoto is worth every penny the Dodgers gave him, he is the true #1 starter on that team. Like I said, they’re a good team.
Now, will they threepeat? Shohei Ohtani apparently went full Patrick Mahomes today and called it. Maybe he’ll be more lucky than Patrick. Obviously Snell, Glasnow, and Ohtani’s arms could all fall off at any point and they could be in trouble. Mookie showed signs of slowing offensively this year and Freeman was more “very good” than great. They have some older players who have been staples of that lineup who are not young anymore. They get the benefit of the doubt until someone challenges them next year. Milwaukee and Philadelphia appear to be in the ballgame, but you have to actually get it done once before you get the benefit of the doubt. Toronto got quite close, but Toronto has to start over next season like everyone else, and then show us they are more 2025 than 2024.
This ranking will serve as the last ranking for the 2025 season. There’s some minor movement in the playoff teams, but nothing big. The next time I do one of these rankings will probably be around the Winter Meetings, when free agency gets very hot and rosters are changing. Until then, there’s nothing to really change. So this will be it for now. We’ll probably basically do a monthly ranking in December and January.
If the 2025 Election were a race for a new seat on the Supreme Court, I’d probably be predicting the GOP to narrowly win. It’s not though, and that is going to loom large in how people interpret tomorrow’s results. The Republican Party and their rich backers need voters to vote all the way to the end of the ballot, then vote “no” on retention for the three Supreme Court seats and the singular seat up for the Superior and Commonwealth Courts. That’s a tall task, history says.
Over 810 thousand votes are in already (810,377). The truth is that my numbers are a few hours behind, and that number is probably higher now. Democrats hold a roughly 336,000 voter edge in those votes. I expect 2,403,455 voters to vote in person tomorrow. I expect Republicans to hold about a 290,000 vote edge in registration tomorrow. That means Democrats come out around 46,000 voters up in registration. The roughly 245,000 independent and third party voters will decide tomorrow’s statewide races. Again, if this were a regular election where both parties had candidates on the ballot, I’d be predicting a nail biter.
It’s not though. I can only recall one statewide judge losing retention, and he was neck deep in the 2006 pay raise scandal. Democrats as individual candidates for retention and as a collective movement are spending like crazy to get their voters to vote “yes.” That seems like the likely outcome to me. What I sort of wonder to myself is if Alice Beck Dubow and Michael Wojcik might suffer from less notoriety in their retentions for the Superior and Commonwealth Courts. So if the Supreme Court Judges get 55% Yes tomorrow, do these two end up in a nail biter. The other thing I’m interested in is whether there are signs of a Democratic wave here. Friends working elections in Washington state and Virginia tell me that suburban voters are breaking hard towards Democrats in their polling, with even a substantial number of moderate Republicans (10-15% above normal) in suburban areas breaking towards Democrats. If we see numbers like that in Bucks, Lehigh, Northampton, Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware, it could be a very good night for Democrats. Look, if these retentions end up being blowouts with over 60% voting yes, you have to at least consider that’s what normally happens. For the partisan attention these races got though, I’d be surprised by that.
There are two stand alone judicial races tomorrow at the state level, and they are a very different story. Washington County Judge Brandon Neuman is the Democratic candidate for the Superior Court, and he faces horror movie character 2023 Republican nominee Maria Battista (I managed one of her successful opponents in 2023, so I definitely have some feelings about her). Philadelphia County Judge Stella Tsai faces Republican Matt Wolford in the race for Commonwealth Court. If I had to guess, this will end up in a split decision, with Neuman winning close and Wolford winning close. This will basically come down to the independent and third party voters. One thing I have to wonder is how well the voters know any of these four, compared to the Supreme Court race.
Even a blowout in Pennsylvania is closer than most elections in most of America. If someone wins by 100k votes, we act like that’s some blowout when over 3 million people vote. This election will generally be decided by two things. First, the 245,000 or so independent and third party voters, which probably will pick a winner. Second, the 282,088 vote by mail ballots that have not been returned. Democrats have 100,000 more votes in this group, so more returning is good for them. As is, I am predicting a turnout of 3,213,674 or more. I’m predicting the “yes” votes for Supreme Court to be around 55%, with slightly less for the lower courts. I’m predicting the new seats go to Neuman and Wolford.
It will all be over tomorrow, folks. To a large extent, we sort of know what’s happening already. There are about 40,210 highly likely Election Day voters. The Republicans hold a substantial lead amongst them of 6,111 votes. There are 3,417 independent and third party voters who are likely to show up tomorrow. Two years ago, 47,015 people voted on Election Day. Tara Zrinski got 18,628 votes and lost them by a little bit over 7,500. I am predicting 48,392 Election Day voters tomorrow. Republicans will have a 6,729 vote advantage over Democrats. There will be just over 5,000 independent and third party voters. Tom Giovanni and the Republican ticket will win Election Day by a hair under 8,000. If you’re watching for anything, it’s whether we cross 49 or 50 thousand Election Day votes, and whether his margin is more than 8,000.
Two years ago, 25,421 people voted by mail. Democrats crushed the Republicans with these voters. Zrinski won this group by 13,331 and actually did a little worse than the statewide court numbers. Democratic numbers are a little down from that height though. 16,175 Democrats have returned their ballots, compared to 6,034 Republicans. That’s an edge of 10,141. There are 2,500 independent and third party votes in. Election Day independents probably break Republican and vote by mail independents tend to break Democratic. For argument’s sake, if that’s the case here, Democrats probably come out 10,600 votes up, and Zrinski wins by a little under 3,000 votes. Of course, that’s assuming more votes don’t come in. We’re at 24,709 in already, so it’s probably a bit crazy to think most of the remaining ballots come in. There are 9,150 of them still out there though, and Democrats hold an advantage of 3,020 amongst their registration. Republicans are definitely doing a bit better than 2023 amongst vote by mail voters, but they’d still be happy if less of these votes came in.
Tom Giovanni is probably not going to win tomorrow. The numbers are better for him than they were for John Cusick against Zrinski in 2023 though. Zrinski won the Controller race by 5,775 that year. She’s only going to get to that number if like 3 or 4 thousand more vote by mail ballots come in, or she crushes him with independents. As of right now, I expect turnout to be slightly higher than 2023, something in the neighborhood of 74,000, and I expect Zrinski to win by about 2,600 votes, which is just shy of 4%. So she gets about 51% and he gets about 47%. Is there a path for Giovanni though? Yes. First, I think he has to hope that less than 1,500 more vote by mail ballots come in. Second, he needs to crush it with Election Day independent voters and win the independent voters who voted by mail. Then he’ll need at least some portion of Democrats to come over and vote for him, beyond the usual. That’s a lot, and he and his party did not run a campaign that was advantageous for that. As usual, they followed the conventional wisdom that most of their voters will vote on Election Day. That’s great and all, but it isn’t worth a cup of coffee at Wawa if that’s not enough voters to win. They also messaged entirely at their base with a Charlie Kirk mailer, and weirdly put out signs asking “Where’s the money Lamont?,” as if a.) anyone knows what that means, b.) they actually wanted to drag the guy that crushed them the last two Executive races into the race, and c.) he was their opponent. The strategy was bizarre and made no sense. I think it will probably cost them a relatively close Executive race, a very close judge race, and any shot at the majority on County Council (they need to win 4 seats tomorrow). I think Democrats Dave Holland and Lori Vargo Heffner and Republican Sam Elias will win seats tomorrow night. I would predict the Democrats to win four for sure, but Democrats drop off much faster as we go down the ballot. I think Theresa Fadem and Jason Boulette will be in a very close race with Republicans John Goffredo and John Brown. My guess is Fadem and Goffredo hang on. For Zrinski to be able to govern, she will need two Democrats besides Vargo Heffner to win, so she needs Holland, Fadem, and Boulette to have good nights. If it’s a good night for Republicans and Giovanni over performs, they absolutely could get Elias, Goffredo, and Brown through. I just don’t think I see them getting four seats unless Giovanni wins.
Apocalypse Vibes 