The PA Specials
Allegheny Incoming
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the news. That’s why you’re here. Although it comes as no surprise that Democrats held onto their vacant House seats in the February 7th special elections, what’s truly surprising is the degree by which they did. Allow me to explain.
On the surface, the dynamics of those elections were forthcoming. Low turnout in the middle of February off the back of a midterm mere months prior, a president of the same party in power, numerous statewide wins in 2022 at the top of the ticket, etc. Although those seats were never at risk of flipping, it would have not been surprising, and perhaps expected, for candidate performances to be close to or slightly under the performance baselines for the three districts in those specials.
So, what happened? Not only did Democrats significantly outperform expectations, they blew off the barn doors with the ridiculous numbers they managed to squeak out. Joe McAndrew (HD-32), Abigail Salisbury (HD-34), and Matt Gergely (HD-35) all won in a walk, putting up impressive margins in the process.
What were those numbers, and how did they do it? Let’s take a look.
District Breakdowns
Nestled around the city of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County, HD-32, 34, and 35 are safe Dem. Simply put, you would have to nuke virtually every registered Democratic voter in all three districts to have a prayer’s chance of winning as a Republican. A bit of an overstatement, but you get the gist of it. Along with their strong partisan leanings, the population of each district is broken down via the following demographics.
Insert obligatory girl power phrase here, especially since women make up the majority of voters in all districts, even after adjusting for voting population metrics. This is especially pronounced in HD-35, where they have a 7 point edge over their male counterparts.
Additionally, it comes as no surprise as to why those districts are heavily Democratic. You have large blocs of black voters in all of them and a good portion of whites who split along expected partisan and ideological lines for PA suburban voters. It’s not just that any Democrat could win in them. It’s that, to borrow a phrase from former president Trump, they could probably shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and still win anyway.
So, what’s the deal? Given all of those considerations, those specials could have been low key affairs. But they decidedly were not, which brings us to the next point.
Democratic Contributions
In specials where the outcome is all but assured, you generally don’t expect a lot of investment from outside forces. A few token endorsements, some volunteers, etc. usually constitute most of the effort that goes into them. What made this time around rather interesting, however, was the fact that the state Democratic Party, particularly the HDCC, did not take any of those races for granted. All three seats are deep blue, but they were treated as if they were battlegrounds. After all, why take the chance if those seats are what’s required to sustain your newfound majority in the State House?
And because of that, people are going to show up. If you have a competent organization, you’re going to do what’s required to win, even if your race is a cakewalk. Good candidates and parties muster the ability to care about their campaigns not only because they must, but because it’s good ethics and good discipline.
And when I say that the state party showed up, they SHOWED up. Members from the Democratic delegation all across the state bore down on Allegheny County. They knocked on doors, made calls, attended events for their candidates, and more. Even Fetterman and Shapiro shone some attention on those races. And guess what? It all paid off. One campaign in particular even managed to knock on 10,000 doors across their district, an impressive feat for the short time window in those specials.
What about the GOP? Good question.
GOP Opposition
Despite the GOP fully contesting all three of those districts (they didn’t field candidates in two of them last November), they put minuscule effort into those races. Virtually no funding, minimal mailers, a few events, etc. constituted the major themes of what was going on. The extent of those efforts was probably no more than the candidates themselves and one or two other people engaging with voters, with the occasional event being held by the Allegheny County Republican Party to help prop them up.
On its surface, such a turn of events is a little perplexing for some observers. This was an opportunity for Republicans to push back a bit and at least make Dems sweat in terms of performance on the margins, as well as test how viable they could continue to be downballot in blue-trending suburbs. As a metric, Republicans really needed to see if they could stem the bleeding and perform at or above expectations in the type of environment at hand in those specials.
Well, they failed. Miserably. I mentioned earlier that Dems blew the barn doors off with their performances. It’s finally time to address what that means.
Performances
Every district in the state and the state itself has a benchmark - AKA a partisan lean. That lean is composed of registered voters of each party, demographics, past performances, related metrics, and what have you, depending on how exactly that lean is measured (different sites and organizations interpret this differently). The lean essentially says that, in a perfectly neutral environment and all other things considered, this is how well a specific candidate or party should perform.
Having said that, it would’ve been entirely reasonable for Democrats to perform at or a little under the expected benchmark for each district given the overall situation. Instead, well… take a look at this table.
Upon observation of those numbers, you’ll notice some remarkable things. For one, not only did Democrats outrun the partisan lean of their districts, they did so by numbers drastically exceeding what’s normally expected from special elections of this nature. Every single candidate did very well, though of particular note is HD-35, where, despite being the least Democratic-leaning district, the candidate there had the biggest serial overperformance.
Furthermore, in that same district, the sole one to be contested by a Republican candidate in both 2022 and 2023, saw a 32.4 pt win for the Democratic candidate in 2022. If you’re able to put two and two together, you’ll realize that the 2023 special outran that metric by 16.3 pts for a 48.7 pt win. Crazy!
Additionally, if you’re curious to see how those candidates did in comparison to Biden in 2020, check this table out. The numbers are adjusted for district changes after the 2020 Census.
Biden performed pretty close to the baseline in HD-32 and 34, but underran HD-35 by 10 pts. There are a lot of cursory explanations for that, given the composition of the district, but the point remains. Being able to outperform everyone who ran in every election since 2020 in a 2023 special is no small feat.
And that’s not all. By my rough calculations, all three candidates outran PA Governor Josh Shapiro in 2022 in those districts by an average of 5-10%. The fact that they managed to do that given the dynamics of Shapiro’s campaign, especially running against what was essentially a nonexistent opponent, is absurd. It’s one thing to outperform 2022, but to outperform the biggest serial outperformer in that year (and others) is another thing entirely.
What of turnout, then? It drives a lot of performance metrics. Fortunately, I have a few insights regarding that.
Turnout
In all three House districts, turnout got pretty close to 50% of that of November 2022. Usually, you see them at much lower numbers, but this level of engagement is unexpected for specials like those in the middle of February. For reference, the turnout for the recent Senate district special (SD-27) at the end of January was roughly a third of 2022 turnout. On a precinct level, engagement was a fair bit higher than in the previous special in that race, which brings an interesting concept into play.
Do you know what’s fascinating about those races? The Senate special was dominated by rural, lower propensity voters while the House specials had higher propensity voters in the suburbs and a more engaged state party. Both elections involved seats that were safe for their respective factions and wouldn’t have flipped either way. It’s quite telling.
All told, in all three House districts and the Senate special, Dem turnout was higher than that of Republicans - it’s one reason why the Democrat in the SD-27 race also overperformed the baseline there. By that, I mean more registered Dem voters came out over GOP the base. This is not surprising in the slightest, especially given that Republicans only had a turnout edge of a point or two over Democrats in November 2022 per my calculations.
In light of that, you can extrapolate a bit. Beyond just the Allegheny districts, Dem turnout statewide has remained remarkably strong in a variety of different environments in the last few years. This is emblematic of the well-documented shift of suburban and higher propensity voters into the Democratic column. It’s right around this time period that we’re finally starting to see the effects of that kick into fruition.
Conclusions
Frankly, the troubles for the GOP in Allegheny, and by proxy, the suburbs, continue to mount. These special elections were high engagement with high propensity/educated voters and they got smoked even more badly than last November. Those voters, particularly suburbanites, responded well to the heavy Dem outreach efforts and rewarded them with those turnout numbers.
It’s been observed for a while now that the GOP continues to slide in the suburbs. If anything, those latest data points reaffirm that notion. Those specials were perfect for testing that assertion for both parties and it paid off. Like I said earlier, you don’t just outperform Josh Shapiro by up to 10% in some random, no-name special elections where Republicans should have been favored turnout-wise in terms of a higher percentage of their registered voters in each district.
Now, I’m not saying that PA is about to become a deep blue haven anytime soon. Or at all, for that matter. Republicans can absolutely win statewide and still can in many instances. But with the direction the party is going in, a lot of the positions and issues at the forefront of today’s national debate(s) will continue to be poison to many of the PA voters driving the state’s shifting leans. This will be particularly troublesome for the GOP reps remaining in suburban-heavy districts.
I’ve always believed that Allegheny is a barometer of things to come. It was in 2020, 2022, 2023, and perhaps again in 2024. Ignore it at your own peril.