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

You can bet that, no matter the outcome of the race in New York tonight, the winning party will find favorable tea leaves for 2024. But it’s important to keep in mind that Pilip and Suozzi are both atypical candidates running in an atypical race — November will likely look very different.

If Republicans win, they’ll point to immigration as a key issue in 2024, one that allowed them to maintain hold of a district that Biden carried by 8 percentage points and step out of the shadow of Santos. It’s a sign that Democrats have indeed gone too far left and a referendum on Biden’s presidency, they’ll argue. But there are a few caveats to keep in mind. First, GOP leadership handpicked their nominee, whose profile is particularly well-suited to the Long Island district: an Ethiopian Jew who served in the Israeli Defense Force before immigrating from Israel to the U.S. Pilip has also said that she wouldn’t support Trump if he is convicted of a crime. If she wins, she’ll get to run for reelection this fall with the advantage of incumbency, but Republicans like her, who take a more moderate stance on both policy issues and Trump, might struggle to win over the GOP primary electorate and make it onto the ballot in November.

If Democrats win, they’ll argue that Pilip was too extreme, particularly on the issue of abortion. They’ll likely highlight the appeal of middle-of-the-road Democratic candidates like Suozzi. But Democrats don’t have Suozzis to run in every congressional district across the country, either. He’s a former member of Congress who has worked alongside Republicans to build a record as a pragmatic centrist, and also has extensive ties to his district. Like Pilip, Suozzi was chosen by party leadership, and didn’t have to veer left to win a competitive Democratic primary. We should also keep a close eye on Suozzi’s margin of victory if he wins — narrowly winning a district that Biden carried by 8 points just a few years ago wouldn’t necessarily be a great sign that Democrats are on the way to winning the House majority.

—Leah Askarinam, 538

The U.S. House of Representatives isn’t the only legislative body with close margins. For the past year, Democrats have held a one-seat (at times no-seat) majority in the Pennsylvania state House — their first in over 10 years. Their tumultuous first year in power saw six special elections held on three separate dates. And today, for the fourth time in just over a year, another state legislative special election will determine the balance of power in the commonwealth’s lower chamber.

The latest race pits Democratic attorney and school board member Jim Prokopiak against Republican restaurant server and former health care aide Candace Cabanas, to fill a seat vacated in December by nine-term Democratic Rep. John Galloway. It’s not a sure thing, but Democrats are favored to hold onto the district, located north of Philadelphia and across the Delaware River from Trenton: In 2020, Biden would have carried it 56 percent to 43 percent. The seat’s importance to maintaining Democrats’ fragile House majority also helped Prokopiak build a massive fundraising advantage over Cabanas.

A Democratic win today would shore up their current 101-100 majority, while a Republican upset would wrest back control. (Although the chamber would be tied at 101-101, there would be one vacant seat previously held by a Republican — and per chamber rules, the House majority in the case of a tie goes to the party that last controlled the vacant seats.)

Meanwhile, four other state legislative special elections will also be held tonight: one in the Bronx, one in the Oklahoma City region and two in Georgia. While these are all expected to be relatively sleepy races, they’re worth noting as data points, to Nathaniel’s earlier note about special elections as predictors of national election results.

—Tia Yang, 538

While you may be most familiar with Democratic candidate Tom Suozzi from his runs for New York governor — or that fact that he was Rep. Santos’s predecessor in the House — the former attorney and father of three has had a long political career in this region of New York. Suozzi was mayor of his hometown, Glen Cove, from 1994-2001, and is part of a local political dynasty: his father and uncle served as mayor of Glen Cove prior to him. He was elected Nassau County executive in 2001 and was widely praised for resuscitating the county’s finances during his eight years in that office.

Suozzi’s first run for governor came in 2006, when he lost a challenge against then-state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer in the Democratic primary. (If you’re too young to remember what happened next, have I got some reading for you.) A few years later, he lost reelection as county executive. He then spent several years in the private sector, working as an attorney and consultant. It wasn’t until Democratic Rep. Steve Israel announced his retirement in 2016 that Suozzi decided to attempt a political comeback, running to replace the 15-year House veteran later that fall. Suozzi beat out four other candidates in the competitive primary and went on to win the seat, and was reelected twice.

During his time in Congress, Suozzi focused on issues of local concern, like raising the cap on state and local tax deductions, and built a centrist record, working across the aisle on issues like immigration and serving as vice-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. He was a reliable supporter of President Biden’s policies, voting with the president 100 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis. He also got into hot water for failing to report stock trades he had made, in potential violation of insider trading laws, though the House Ethics Committee ultimately cleared him and two other representatives.

In 2021, Suozzi announced he would not run for reelection, instead challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in another gubernatorial run. The primary race got heated, and many prominent Democrats were displeased with Suozzi for mounting the primary challenge in the first place. Hochul ultimately trounced Suozzi, who came in third, and he reportedly ended up apologizing to the governor in December, as part of an effort to shore up support among New York’s Democratic powerbrokers and secure the party’s nomination to reclaim his House seat.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538

This special election has national implications not only because it could affect the narrow margin in the House of Representatives. Special election results overall can be predictive of the next regularly scheduled election. But you can’t just look at who wins and who loses; you have to look at which party does better than the baseline partisanship of its district. As I’ve written, there’s a pretty reliable correlation between a party’s average overperformance in special elections and the House popular vote margin in the next election.

According to a weighted average of the 2016 and 2020 presidential election results in the district, New York’s 3rd District is 3 percentage points bluer than the nation as a whole. That means a Suozzi win in the double or high single digits would be a bullish sign for Democrats, and a Pilip win would be a bullish sign for Republicans.

Of course, one special election can’t tell you much of anything. Local factors — such as, in this case, the ghost of Santos — can make them unrepresentative of the national mood. So you’d be wise to throw tonight’s overperformance into an average with all the other special election results from this cycle before drawing any broader conclusions.

Entering tonight, Democrats had overperformed by an average of 7 points in congressional and state legislative special elections since the beginning of 2023. If history is any guide, that’s a sign that Democrats will have a strong 2024 election. On the other hand, The New York Times’s Nate Cohn has convincingly written that special-election electorates are fundamentally different from — and more Democratic than — the electorate that will go to the polls this November.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538