Election News

Responding to a recent accusation of groping, GOP Rep. Tom Reed of New York put out a statement Sunday saying that he would not run for any elected office in 2022. Reed will not seek a 7th term in the House, nor will he run for governor, a possibility he had been seriously considering. Ironically, it is Democratic Gov. Mario Cuomo's own issues with harassment that created an opening for Reed to consider what would otherwise be an extremely long-shot challenge in this deep blue state.

Reed represents the largely rural 23rd district that borders Pennsylvania from Lake Erie to west of Binghamton. Reed won reelection by nearly 17% in 2020, while Donald Trump won here by 11% over Joe Biden.

There are currently five vacancies in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Elections for the two open seats in Louisiana are Saturday. These are in the form of a 'jungle primary', where all candidates from all parties appear on a single ballot. If no candidate gets a majority of the vote, the top two - even if of the same party - will advance to an April 24 runoff.

Polls close at 9:00 PM Eastern Time. Live results will appear below after that time.

District 2: Former Rep. Cedric Richmond won a 5th term, with 64% of the vote, in this safely Democratic district that includes most of New Orleans. Richmond resigned January 15 to join the Biden administration. A field of 15 is vying to succeed him in Saturday's primary.  Democratic State Sens. Troy Carter and Karen Peterson appear to be the frontrunners. Carter has scored most of the political and newspaper endorsements, while the more progressive Peterson has gotten the support of Stacey Abrams and Emily's List. Activist Gary Chambers, also a Democrat, is the only other candidate seeing notable support in limited polling. In a recent poll, Carter received 35% support, Peterson 24% and Chambers 11%.

Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona announced Friday that she will not seek reelection in 2022. Kirkpatrick has served her five terms across three separate spans. She was first elected in 2008 in District 1, a sprawling region that covered most of the eastern half of the state.  Kirkpatrick lost reelection in 2010 to Republican Paul Gosar.  After the Census, District 1 became more favorable to Democrats and Kirkpatrick successfully ran for her old seat in 2012. (Gosar ran in District 4 where he still serves today).

Sabato's Crystal Ball is out with an overview of the 2022 gubernatorial landscape. 36 seats will be contested next year, of which 20 are held by Republicans. There are an additional two elections in Democratic-held seats this year. Sabato reviewed the New Jersey and Virginia contests last week.

The map below includes ratings for all 38 contests to be held through 2022. Click/tap it for an interactive version.

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt said Monday saying that he won't seek a third term in 2022. He made the announcement via a video release:

A summary of some content changes to the 270toWin website in recent weeks:

2024 Electoral Map  There will be a revised electoral map for the next presidential election, based on each state's population as reported in the 2020 Census. The release of that information - usually in December of the Census year - has been delayed until April largely due to the coronavirus. While we don't have the official 2024 map yet, the changes are still expected to be largely the same as those projected at the end of 2019.  The interactive electoral map has been updated to reflect that. Using the buttons above the map, you can see how things will change.  For example, the 306-232 result in the actual 2020 election becomes 302-236 if repeated in 2024.  

It took over three months but there's finally a winner in the November 3 congressional race in NY-22.  Republican Claudia Tenney has won by 109 votes out of nearly 320,000 cast over incumbent Democrat Anthony Brindisi. 

After an extended review, a judge ruled Friday that Tenney had won the race. New York certified the election results at noon Monday, and Brindisi conceded shortly thereafter, saying he would drop any further legal appeals.

I really appreciate Anthony's call today and thank him for his service. He graciously offered to help ensure a smooth transition and I look forward to working with him over the coming days to complete that process on behalf of everyone in NY22. https://t.co/3XEDKZh3TJ

— Claudia Tenney (@claudiatenney) February 8, 2021

Tenney will return to the seat she won by 5 points in the 2016 election. She lost her reelection bid to Brindisi by about 2 points in 2018. 

In the end, Democrats won 222 seats in November's election while Republicans took 213. While Democrats maintained control, their margin was significantly reduced.  The GOP had a net gain of 12 seats, including one in MI-3, which was vacated by Libertarian Justin Amash.

Currently, the House sits at  221 Democrats and 210 Republicans. There are four vacancies. In addition to NY-22, where Tenney should be seated in the near future:

Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama said Monday that he will not run again in 2022. The six-term Republican is the longest serving Senator in the state's history.

A few weeks back, we did a preliminary calculation of the 2020 electoral map if all states allocated electoral votes like Maine and Nebraska.  Those two states award two electoral votes to the popular vote winner and one each to the popular vote winner in each congressional district.  In 2020, this created a split in both those states: Trump won Nebraska while Biden won District 2; the opposite happened in Maine. 

Most states don't report presidential results by congressional district so it falls on a third party to map precinct/county reporting to districts. DailyKos does excellent work in this area; we've largely relied on their data for the map below.  There are still 5 states where the information isn't complete, including New York and Pennsylvania. However, this article on crossover districts by J. Miles Coleman at Sabato's Crystal Ball fills in those blanks for us. This updated map should be final (or very close).

Applying the congressional district method nationwide, Joe Biden still wins but by a narrower 277-261 result. While the approach might seem like a fairer one at first glance, it fails that test in the real world where many districts are heavily gerrymandered.  Politics would have to come out of the redistricting process to make this a viable alternative to winner-take-all. That's not going to happen.

Sabato's Crystal Ball is out with its initial ratings for the 34 seats to be contested in the 2022 midterm Senate elections. Republicans will be defending 20 seats, Democrats 14. However, the number of competitive seats is small and roughly split between the two parties. This means another closely-contested battle for control is on the horizon.

Read the Crystal Ball article >>

A map of the ratings is below. Click or tap for an interactive version you can use to create and share your own 2022 Senate forecast.