New York 3rd District special election: Suozzi projected to defeat Pilip

Nassau County legislator Mazi Pilip has had a unique path to becoming the Republican nominee in this race. Pilip was born to Orthodox Jewish parents in a rural village in Ethiopia that, according to her campaign website, “didn’t even have running water.” When she was 12, in 1991, Pilip and her family immigrated to Israel as part of Project Solomon, a covert Israeli military operation where thousands of Ethiopian Jews were airlifted out of the country in the span of 36 hours. Pilip later served in the Israel Defense Forces before immigrating to the U.S.

A mother of seven, Pilip is a relative newcomer to politics. She was elected in 2021 as part of a red wave that resulted in a GOP supermajority in the county legislature … despite being a registered Democrat, according to reporting from Politico. In that election, Pilip defeated incumbent Democratic legislator Ellen Birnbaum, who had represented the 10th District since 2015. Prior to her political career, Pilip worked in the non-profit sector, with a specific focus on pro-Israel causes, something she has continued to champion as a legislator, most recently speaking out in October in support of Israel in its war against Hamas.

Pilip stuck to party lines during a fairly quiet tenure on the County Legislature. Among her accomplishments are securing grants for the local police department to buy speed radar signs, negotiating a land transfer from the county to expand park space, and funding the restoration of a village hall.

When it comes to the top election issues for voters, Pilip has taken a fairly moderate tack, saying she is against a national abortion ban and would not support Trump as the Republican nominee if he is convicted of a crime — a break from many of her GOP colleagues who have brushed off Trump’s legal woes. “Nobody is above the law,” Pilip told local news station PIX11. “If [Trump is] convicted of a crime, he cannot represent us. But unless we see that … I will support him. He was a great candidate, a great president. He did great things for America.”

She has, however, taken a firm stance on immigration, stating that she wants to end sanctuary city policies and invest in ICE. “We have to secure our border. That’s our top priority,” she said at a press conference last month outside a migrant tent city in Queens. She also aligned with House conservatives and Trump in opposing the bipartisan border security deal that stalled in the Senate last week, calling it “the legalization of the invasion of our country.”

While she lacks the wider notoriety and political experience of her Democratic opponent, Pilip is well known in the region and is active outside of her political duties, including serving as vice president of her synagogue.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538

On Monday’s episode of the 538 Politics podcast, Brittany Shepherd and Leah Askarinam joined me to preview tonight’s special election. Brittany is herself from the district and has been reporting on the ground there, and Leah has been digging into the numbers to get a sense of the partisan lean of the district. We talked about both what makes the area unique and what could make it a good bellwether for how debates over immigration, the economy, crime and the war in Gaza could play out in the coming months. We also touched on the political conversation about Biden’s age and debates in Congress over the border and foreign aid. If you are still cleaning up post-dinner while you get ready for results to come in, give the podcast a listen!

—Galen Druke, 538

There are not many polls of today's NY-03 special, but those we do have suggest the race is close. Since mid-December, when the Democratic and Republican parties selected their nominees, public pollsters have released four surveys of the race. On average, they show Suozzi with a lead of 3 percentage points over Pilip, but that's within each surveys' margins of sampling error. And given there are only four polls, their average also comes with hefty uncertainty.

It would be wise not to take these polls as precise predictions from the Oracle of Delphi. For one, three of these polls show no candidate winning more than 50 percent of the vote — often a harbinger of uncertainty for a contest (and there’s no third-party challenger to suck up the remaining votes, so they’ll have to go to one candidate or the other). But for another, polls of House elections are typically less accurate. In doing the research for our new pollster ratings, I found that House general election polls are the second-least accurate category of poll, after surveys of presidential primaries.

As for narratives, the Siena College/Newsday poll conducted earlier this month shows a familiar lay of the land. Voters said Pilip would do a better job on immigration and lowering taxes, while Suozi ranked higher on protecting democracy and abortion rights. When respondents were asked who they'd vote for if the presidential election were held today, they picked Donald Trump by a 5-point margin (47 percent to Joe Biden's 42). That would be in line with the district’s recent swingy vote history; NY-03 has a 538 partisan lean of D+4 points and Biden would have carried the district by 8.2 points in 2020, while Santos won it by 7 points in the 2022 midterms.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

Tired of presidential primary politics but still looking for an election fix? We’ve got just the ticket! Tonight we’ll be your guides to the special election in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, which became vacant when former Rep. George Santos was expelled from the House on Dec. 1. We’re watching to see whether Democratic former Rep. Tom Suozzi will reclaim his seat in Congress or whether Nassau County Legislator Mazi Pilip will hold the seat for Republicans despite Santos’s long shadow.

Today’s winner will represent the Long Island-based district only for the remainder of 2024, but there are a few reasons both parties are treating it as a bigger deal than that. For one, the race will have an immediate impact on House Republicans’ increasingly untenable single-digit majority. The winner could very well serve as a tiebreaking vote on critical legislation in coming weeks and months.

In the longer view, the contest has offered an opportunity for parties to test out strategies and build momentum for House contests this fall. The 3rd District is a decent proxy for expected battle lines in November — the path to the House majority in 2024 could very well run through blue-leaning suburbs like this one, and specifically through the New York swing seats that helped hand Republicans their majority in 2022.

As for timing, polls close at 9 p.m. Eastern. Results will likely start to trickle in shortly after that, but given New York’s history of slow vote-counting and the expected closeness of the election, we could be in for a late night. Stick with us for full results and analysis from the Suozzi-Pilip faceoff, plus a handful of state legislative special elections that are also being held today — including one that will determine which party controls the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

—Tia Yang, 538