New York 3rd District special election: Suozzi projected to defeat Pilip for seat vacated by Santos
Democrats cut into Republicans’ already narrow House majority.
Democrat Tom Suozzi has won the special election in New York’s 3rd District, defeating Republican Mazi Pilip to flip a House seat from red to blue. (The seat was formerly held by Republican Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from Congress in December after a series of scandals.) As a result, Republicans’ already narrow House majority has been reduced to 219-213.
Throughout the night, 538 reporters, analysts and contributors have been live-blogging the results in real time and breaking down what (if anything) they mean for November. Read our full analysis below.
Latest headlines:
Pilip is going to need a big showing in Nassau to catch Suozzi
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
About that snow, Leah
I was really curious how much the weather might affect in-person turnout today on Long Island and in Queens. The nor’easter that blew through parts of the state today was patchy and weird, and passed over NY-03 pretty quickly, but dumped a lot of snow on its way. Some parts of Nassau County saw as much as 8 inches of snow! After what has been a pretty mild start to winter, it’s not ridiculous to expect the weather deterred some voters in what is already a lower-turnout scenario.
—Kaleigh Rogers, 538
Will there be any takeaways from tonight?
Your post about polls, Leah, reminds me just how weird this election is. There might not be any takeaways about the polling, but I'm wondering if we'll really be able to take away anything from what happens tonight? I think most people are curious about this race because of Santos, who was such a uniquely scandalous figure that I'm not sure there's an immediate comparison in our recent political history. It's such an unusual circumstance, and Suozzi has held the seat before. Maybe he'll win and resume it, and the Santos incident will become like a distant dream.
—Monica Potts, 538
Getting ahead of a potential polling debate
Polling a special election is already tough. Add in a snowstorm, and it's even tougher.
Turnout in a regular general election — where comparable data comes out in every congressional election, every two years — is much easier to gauge than turnout in a special election. We just don't have comparable data for how voters behave when a vacancy is being filled in February of a presidential year. As Elliot pointed out before polls even closed, the few public polls of the race found Suozzi with a narrow lead, but one within those polls' margin of error.
The point is: If the polls are off tonight — and I'm not predicting that they will be — it doesn't mean they'll be off in November.
—Leah Askarinam, 538