Yeah, the fact that it goes from 18% to 59% with a midpoint of 38.5% instead of from 0% to 100% with a midpoint of 50% is…an interesting choice.
This is also people who say that they approve, but the numbers look like they don’t adjust for undecideds. I’d rather have something like (approve - disapprove), or (approve)/(percentage not undecided).
Still have to have Dem. candidates that these disapproving GOPer’s in Red States will vote for. Until I see that, I don’t think that many people will simply not vote.
Or they used the default conditional formatting options (max value = red, min value = blue, median=white) in whatever tool they used to prepare the map, without considering the value of setting 50% equal to white and having the extreme blue / extreme red be equidistant from 50%.
1 Like
Trying not to get sued by Trump?
2 Likes
Paxton has immense baggage though.
I am surprised he got such high results in a primary.
Yeah that was the crazy part, that Paxton got so many votes. He’s a certified scumbag.
Which one is Trumpier?
He was also a scum bag in 2022 when he was re-elected AG. I don’t think much new has come out on him in the last few years though some his divorce stuff may be a bit more public than it was back then.
It’s a NH state house seat - one of 400 in one of the tiniest states. It’s not a major anything, and represents -4,500 total votes. It’s trivial to swing that many votes in a low turnout election.
Folks try to read so much into these tiny one-off elections, and it just makes them complacent and naively optimistic about the elections that matter.
2 Likes
It’s true you can’t read too much into one election. But didn’t she lose by 13% in the last election cycle?
And doesn’t this mark the 28th seat across the country flipped from R to D while the Rs have managed to flip exactly zero seats from D to R since the Presidential election?
It doesn’t mean it will be that way in November, but if I was a Republican in an R+5 or less district, I’d be a little worried a about retaining my seat in the fall unless some things go really well between now and election day.
Bobbi Boudman lost to Glen Cordelli in the Carrol 7th district election in 2024 with 3,871 votes versus Cordelli’s 5,095.
This week’s NH elections were for local (town, school district) offices. Turnout is usually extremely low. This week’s Carrol 7th special election was won by Bobbi Boudman with 2,207 votes versus Fincher’s 2,042 – that’s less than half the turnout of the previous election.
Boudman will serve in the position for less than a year – she’ll need to win re-election in November. Republicans have a comfortable majority in the NH House. So the election had little significance for Republican voters. In contrast Democrats had an incentive to turn out, since a victory would embarrass the Republican establishment.
yeah, sure, that is what motivates individual voters to show up at the polls…not the many very obvious reasons to be unhappy with Republicans at the moment.
2 Likes
If someone voting for an interim state rep in a state where Republicans have a 35-seat majority thinks they are changing any aspect of the state legislative agenda with their vote then they are an idiot. And it certainly isn’t changing the federal legislative agenda, since both the US Reps for NH (and both the US Senators) are already Democrats.
The November elections will matter. This Carroll 7th special election didn’t, so there’s no point in ascribing meaning to the result.
In all fairness, I will grant that this special election mattered a little more than the earlier Texas special election folks went ga-ga over where the winner won’t even get to spend a single minute in office. But that’s a low bar.
I think the conclusion should be that more people felt compelled to vote for the Democrat or against the Republican as a way to voice their opinion, not that they expected the outcome to change at the state legislature. Same reason millions of people show up every 4 years to check exactly one box on a form with many boxes in states that that will have no chance of changning colors.
2 Likes
I’ve actually thought about revising my rule of “vote third party unless it’s a close election” for the remainder of our Glorious Leader’s reign.
My “vote third party” rule has been strategic – there is almost never a competitive race on general election ballots when I vote, and therefore I think my vote normally has more value expressing dissatisfaction with the two major parties.
I’m thinking that for the remainder of the Trump 2.0 era, my vote might actually have more value voting D in federal and statewide races, even though it won’t make one whit of difference in my blue state, even though I dislike the D party… to lend support to the folks expressing extreme displeasure with the current regime.
(I’ll need to think through whether that should extend to state legislative races. I’m in slightly red state legislative districts, and there’s a risk that the D’s could get supermajorities in the legislature…)
This might actually be the first even-year election that I don’t vote. 
(2024 was the first year that I stopped judging people for not voting.)