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

As George Santos’ time as the most recent member of Congress representing the 3rd District comes to a close, he seems to be relishing Pilip’s likely loss.

—Leah Askarinam, 538

Yeah, Geoffrey, based on that Nassau dump, the Associated Press has gone ahead and projected Suozzi as the winner. Our colleagues at ABC News, however, have yet to make a projection.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

We're now up to 51 percent of the total expected vote reporting after Nassau reported nearly 70,000 votes. Suozzi now leads 59 percent to 41 percent overall, and he's ahead 58 percent to 42 percent in Nassau. That's not too far behind his 62 percent to 38 percent mark in the smaller Queens portion of the district. Early and mail votes likely constituted much of that update from Nassau, and we know those are usually more Democratic-leaning because of the partisan divide in preferred voting methods. So we can expect that Nassau number to get redder as the night wears on. However, it's pretty clear Suozzi is going to be hard to catch at this point with such a sizable lead with half of the vote in.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

We have 82 percent of the expected vote in from the Queens part of the district, and Suozzi leads there by 24 points, 62 percent to 38 percent. Overall, he's up 22 points, 61 percent to 39 percent, as a small number of votes have reported from Nassau, where Pilip leads. As a result, it's pretty clear that tonight's race is going to come down to whether Pilip did a whole lot better in Nassau than Queens. In 2022, there was a 14-point difference in margin between the two parts of the district — Santos lost the Queens part by 4 points but won the much larger Nassau portion by 10. However, Pilip is probably going to need a larger gap than that to win at this rate.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538