Today there are two spe­cial elec­tions to replace Con­gres­sional vacan­cies, one in Nevada and the other in New York. Polls close in New York at 9PM EDT (6PM PDT) and in Nevada at 10PM EDT (7PM PDT).

Nevada Con­gres­sional Dis­trict 2 (Car­son City)

After John Ensign resigned, Nevada Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor Brian San­doval appointed Dean Heller, the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Nevada Con­gres­sional Dis­trict 2, to fill Ensign’s seat.

This, nat­u­rally, left a vacancy that needs to be filled. Today is the elec­tion to fill that seat.

The can­di­dates are:

  • Mark Amodei, State Repub­li­can Party Chairman
  • Kate Mar­shall, Nevada State Treasurer

NV2 cov­ers most of the state, is very rural, and has never elected a Demo­c­rat for Rep­re­sen­ta­tive. The only time a Demo­c­rat got close was 1992, when there was a 4.5-point spread between the two can­di­dates. Oth­er­wise, this dis­trict has been reli­ably double-​​digit Repub­li­can ter­ri­tory. There is no rea­son to expect today’s elec­tion to be any different.

New York Con­gres­sional Dis­trict 9 (Brook­lyn, Queens)

This is the race everyone’s look­ing at. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Anthony Weiner resigned the seat in June, after a scan­dal involv­ing him send­ing ques­tion­able pho­tos of him­self to peo­ple online.

The lead­ing can­di­dates in this race are:

  • Bob Turner, for­mer CEO of Mul­ti­me­dia Entertainment
  • David Weprin, New York Assem­bly member

The dis­trict leans Demo­c­rat, though not as heav­ily as the sur­round­ing dis­tricts; its Cook PVI is D+5. The lat­est polls point to a Turner vic­tory. That said, the last time NY9 sent a Repub­li­can to Wash­ing­ton was dur­ing the Hoover administration.

This spe­cial elec­tion is com­pli­cated some­what by the expec­ta­tion that it will dis­ap­pear as part of the redis­trict­ing result­ing from lost pop­u­la­tion in New York. If Turner wins, the Democratic-​​led state leg­is­la­ture will almost cer­tainly choose this seat to be among those eliminated.

For this rea­son, there weren’t any heavy hit­ters com­ing from the left side of the aisle in this election.

This elec­tion has been described by many as a bell­wether for the 2012 elec­tions. As a rule, the degree to which these spe­cial elec­tions serve as crys­tal balls for upcom­ing gen­eral elec­tions is sig­nif­i­cantly over­stated. Spe­cial elec­tions tend to have atyp­i­cal turnout pro­files, which don’t trans­late well to gen­eral elec­tions — espe­cially Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. Fur­ther­more, polit­i­cal winds change sig­nif­i­cantly over the course of a year. Remem­ber the imme­di­ate after­math of Oper­a­tion Desert Storm, when Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush was guar­an­teed reëlection?

The bot­tom line here is that today’s elec­tions, while inter­est­ing, are not very mean­ing­ful beyond their impact on the makeup of the 112th Congress.

Related arti­cles