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

I'm thinking about what we are going to take away from this evening. I think either party can try to spin their way out of a bad performance, based on the weather, the uniqueness of the candidates or the nature of special elections. But either way, people are going to be talking about immigration. According to polls it is the most important issue to all voters in the district, and it was the issue that saw the most ad spending by a significant clip.

The interesting thing, though, as far as takeaways are concerned, is that both candidates have been pretty hawkish on immigration, and Suozzi has tried to create distance from his own party on the issue. So if Pilip wins, the lesson is sort of, "Oh boy, Democrats are screwed on the issue of immigration in these kinds of competitive areas of the country." But on the other hand, if Suozzi wins, the lesson is still likely to be, "If Democrats want to win in these kinds of districts, they may need to mimic Suozzi's toughness on immigration."

—Galen Druke, 538

Geoff, Queens is small but mighty and can serve as a "tiebreaker" of sorts for the district. In a close election, the Nassau portion of the district tends to end up pretty close to tied, and Queens has the potential to put Democrats over the edge. The closest race the district has seen in recent years was the 2022 state comptroller race, where Democrat Tom DiNapoli lost the 3rd by 2 points. He lost Nassau by 4 points but won Queens by 6 points. Of course, that wasn't enough to win overall, so Suozzi will have to do better than winning Queens by 6, but like you said, he looks on track to do so.

For reference, though, Biden won the Queens portion of the district by 20 points in 2020, and even that pales in comparison to the 30+ point margins that statewide Democrats achieved in 2018. That's a good reminder of how dire the situation has gotten for Democrats in recent years here.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Queens has reported more votes, with 12 percent of the overall expected vote now in and about three-fourths of the votes we're expecting from Queens. Suozzi leads 63 percent to 37 percent among those votes, which puts him well ahead of Democrat Robert Zimmerman's pace in the 2022 midterms, when he lost to Santos. Back then, Zimmerman won the Queens portion of the district by only 4 points, 52 percent to 48 percent, although Santos won about 54 percent to 46 percent overall. There's a good chance that more Election Day votes will reduce Suozzi's edge in Queens, but it's hard to imagine his lead there dropping to just 4 points.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

Polls are closed in NY-03 now, but it could be a while before we get a critical mass of the vote in. One indicator of how things may compare to 2022 is the partisan breakdown of votes so far, published by Queens and Nassau counties. Early reports suggested Democrats have improved over that election, with about 43 percent of ballots returned as of 7:40PM coming from New York voters registered as Democrats. That compares to 35 percent from registered Republicans — or an 8-point gap. That's up from a 4-point gap in 2022's final results.

Of course, party registration is not the same as voting behavior (Santos won that election, after all) — and a good chunk of NY-03 voters today are not registered with a party. So things could still go the other way. But on balance, I'd expects thing will look better for Democrats than in 2022.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538