Goobergunch Political Report

At this time, I can now project that Mark Amodei has been elected to Congress in NV-2. This is a Republican hold.

Apologies for the ugliness of the infographic—the GPR special election projection system currently doesn’t handle large districts very well.

At this time, I am not yet comfortable projecting a winner in NY-9.

UPDATE [22:37 CDT by Goobergunch]: It seems the Nevada Secretary of State’s office misstated the data from Washoe County, and in actuality there are only 7% of precincts reporting. Even so, I think there’s enough information to call the race.

UPDATE [22:52 CDT by Goobergunch]: At this time, I can now project that Bob Turner has been elected to Congress. This is a Republican gain.

UPDATE [23:08 CDT by Goobergunch]: I suppose I should note that the House now has 242 Republicans and 192 Democrats, with one vacancy. Which is the exact same number of Republicans that the 112th House started with. And that’s all from the GPR Election Desk for tonight, folks.

Well, it’s time for our first Congressional election day since the Democrats held CA-36 (Venice and Torrance) on 12 July. First up, in New York, the 9th Congressional District (Queens and Brooklyn South) was vacated in June by the resignation of Anthony Weiner (D). While the district, primarily inhabited by ethnic whites, has been in Democratic hands for decades, it’s been trending away from Democrats over the past decade—Gore got 67% of the vote here, but Kerry got 56% and Obama only 55%. Due mostly to voter discontent with Democrats (it’s unclear from polling whether this is primarily due to the economy or more specific concerns about Israel policy held by the district’s conservative Orthodox Jews), it appears that Republican Bob Turner has a small but definite lead over Democrat David Weprin. However, Democrats do have significant institutional strength here. I rate this election as Tilting Republican; polls close at 21:00 EDT.

Since reapportionment removed two Congressional seats from New York and control of the legislature is split, most people expect one Democratic seat and one Republican seat to be eliminated in redistricting. If Weprin is elected, Democrats are expected to eliminate his district in exchange for an upstate Republican seat. But Turner’s election would complicate matters by removing an obvious Democratic seat to eliminate and forcing the removal of an upstate Democrat such as Kathy Hochul. Therefore, the impact of a Republican gain here tonight might be a bit more harmful to Democrats than just a simple loss of one seat.

Meanwhile, Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District (Reno and Rural Nevada), vacated in April by the elevation of Dean Heller (R) to the Senate, looks to be much less interesting to watch. While the district is not quite so Republican that it’s completely out of reach for Democrats under the right circumstances, the Democrats’ national problems combined with an uninspiring campaign by Kate Marshall (D) have effectively taken this seat out of play. Look for Mark Amodei (R) to be the district’s new Congressman. I rate this election as Likely Republican; polls close at 19:00 PDT, an hour after New York’s.

I’ll have the projected winners of each race posted later tonight after the polls close.