The count of absentee votes has made it pretty plain that Democrat Scott Murphy will be declared the winner and Republican James Tedisco the loser of the New York 20th congressional district special election, and rightly so. In my previous blogging at U.S. News & World Report, I expressed skepticism about both Democrats’ and Republicans’ claims that their side would come out ahead when the absentees were counted. It depended, I thought, on which side did a better job of organizing absentee ballot voting. Now we have the answer: the Democrats did.
In addition, I suggested that, whatever the outcome, there was more reason for satisfaction for Democrats than Republicans in the result. The 50%-50% result here (which is what you get if you round out to integers, whatever the final vote margin) is very close to Barack Obama’s 51%-48% margin over John McCain in the district.
In previous special elections in Georgia, Louisiana and Virginia (including districts in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington) there was a much bigger dropoff in Democratic turnout than in Republican turnout. The Democrats weren’t able to maintain the edge they had in the balance of enthusiasm in the 2008 general election. But in the New York 20th they seem to have done so. This suggests that Republicans would be most unwise to assume that lower Democratic turnout will produce Republican victories in 2009 and 2010. Maybe in some places, but not everywhere, certainly not in the Northeast.
