Previewing Florida SD-40: Three Questions That Will Tell Us the Most About 2018

There's a special legislative election almost every week, but today we have a special special. Ever since Florida State Senator Frank Artiles called a fellow state senator a "fucking asshole" and a "bitch," called the Senate President a "pussy" who was only elected with the help of "six niggas," hired a Hooters calendar girl and a Playboy model as "campaign consultants," and resigned from office in disgrace, the race to replace him has been circled on my calendar—not for any reason related to the Florida-man antics on display from its former occupant, but rather due to the district itself.

Florida Senate District 40 covers Kendall and other dense suburbs southwest of Miami, stretching from South Dixie Highway (U.S. 1) near Dadeland Mall in the east to Krome Avenue in the west. According to Florida data consultant Matthew Isbell, it voted 57.1% for Hillary Clinton and 39.5% for Donald Trump in 2016 yet preferred Republican Marco Rubio to Democrat Patrick Murphy in that year's U.S. Senate race, 50% to 47%. At the same time, Artiles, a Republican, defeated Democrat Dwight Bullard 50.6% to 40.7% for what was (like it is today) an open State Senate seat.

Why the wide variation in results? A plurality of Florida SD-40's voters belong to the difficult-to-pin-down community of Cuban Americans. This historically Republican bloc has edged into competitiveness as young Cuban Americans (who are more liberal) come of age, the national parties have become more racially polarized, and/or President Trump has alienated the Hispanic community writ large. That explains why SD-40 largely rejected Trump in the 2016 presidential election while still supporting Rubio and Artiles (who are both Cuban American themselves). According to Isbell, an estimated 38% of the district's population is Cuban American. Overall, as of the 2010 Census (and, fair warning, South Florida is a rapidly changing area), the district was 74.6% Hispanic, 14.5% non-Hispanic white, and 8.0% non-Hispanic black.

Today, Democrat Annette Taddeo (who is half Italian American, half Colombian American) faces off against Republican José Felix Díaz (who is Cuban American). It's been an expensive campaign (political committees have spent $4.1 million on the race on top of the $1.8 million spent by the campaigns), and the outcome is legitimately in question (the only poll of the race, a three-month-old Democratic internal, gave Taddeo a 42–38% lead). The final results, which will trickle in starting at 7pm ET tonight, will be a particularly useful data point in our never-ending quest to figure out what's going to happen in 2018. There are three crucial questions that we need answered in order to understand how and whether Democrats can take back a U.S. House majority in next year's midterms, and, more than most special elections this year, Florida SD-40 will hold a clue to each of them.

1. Will the election be nationalized, or will voters consider it locally?

This is pretty simple. Unlike more uniform legislative and congressional districts, Republicans have recently done much better here downballot than at the top of the ticket. If voters cast their ballots based on their feelings toward Donald Trump and what is happening in Washington, it's good for Democrats. If they consider the two candidates in a vacuum, it's good for Republicans. Knowing this, Taddeo has tried to tie Díaz (who is a former contestant on The Apprentice!) to Trump with a contrastive TV ad, while Díaz has attempted to play up Taddeo's weaknesses, such as her support for the Colombian peace accord with the FARC and her alleged tolerance of the communist regimes in Cuba and China.

The final result will tell us which candidate was successful. If Taddeo approaches or even exceeds Clinton's 57% here, it could be a sign that this election was decided along national battle lines. That could bode well for Democrats in 2018 if everyone goes to the polls with the unpopular Trump in mind, not their local congressman. If Díaz wins, it's pretty solid evidence that local considerations can still win out in the age of Trump.

2. Will the electorate be more Democratic than usual?

The conventional wisdom about midterm elections is that the electorate is older, whiter, and more Republican than in presidential elections. But most of that conventional wisdom is rooted in the Obama midterms of 2010 and 2014, and the longer-term trend is that the president's party tends to suffer in midterm elections. Indeed, an enthusiasm gap in favor of the Democrats has been apparent lately in measures from the generic ballot to demonstrations. Democratic overperformance has also been a crystal-clear pattern in special-election results so far in 2017, but it'll be important to see whether it holds in SD-40 in particular. Because SD-40 is so heavily Hispanic, there is greater danger than usual of midterm dropoff voting harming Democratic chances. If Taddeo tonight follows in the footsteps of other Democratic special-election candidates across the nation and exceeds the typical Democratic performance in her district, it's a good sign for the party that the typical demographic forces of midterm elections can be overcome. If Díaz does better than expected, it'll suggest that Democrats still have a turnout problem among minority voters. (Note: the best basis for comparison here is not the district's presidential lean, for reasons explained above; instead, keep an eye on how Taddeo and Díaz perform relative to Bullard and Artiles in the last open State Senate race in this district just ten and a half months ago.)

3. Was 2016 a political realignment, or will election results revert to their pre-2016 norms?

Most special elections this year have taken place in districts that shifted toward Republicans in 2016 with Trump on the ticket—enough that we can be pretty sure that "Trump Democrats" aren't lost to Democrats forever. But we know a lot less about the opposite case: historically Republican Clinton voters. Will Democrats be able to hold onto them in future elections? Many of their best paths to a U.S. House majority go through districts, including several in heavily Hispanic California and Florida, that shifted toward Democrats in 2016.

Florida SD-40 is one of those districts. According to Isbell, voters within its lines went for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney 54.5% to 44.9% in 2012. In a scenario where Democrats succeed in nationalizing this special election, a smaller Taddeo win might suggest that voters are sticking with their 2012 preferences; a Taddeo blowout might suggest that the 2016 baseline is more accurate. However, because of this district's unusual ticket-splitting tendencies, it may not be easy (or appropriate) to directly compare the 2017 State Senate results with the 2016 and 2012 presidential results, as explained above. So while the district's (new or old, 2016 or 2012) partisan baseline will certainly factor into tonight's results, it will probably be the trickiest thing to tease out. Simply put, the race is expected to be far closer than either Obama's 9.6-point win or Clinton's 17.6-point win, so a nail-biter wouldn't necessarily mean that the more Republican-favorable (i.e., 2012) baseline is the correct one.

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Indeed, all three of these factors are going to affect the final verdict in Florida SD-40 tonight—and yet we're only going to see one set of topline results. Admittedly, that may make it difficult to tease apart exactly what to take away from the election; for instance, the variables listed above could pull in multiple directions, muddling the analysis and leaving the door open to more than one explanation. There's another major confounder: the cleanup after Hurricane Irma. Many areas of the district, which was hit hard earlier this month, are still without power, and voting may simply not be many people's top priority. (Governor Rick Scott rejected the Democratic Party's request to postpone the election until life in South Florida returned to normal.)

So even though the answers to all three questions will lie hidden in tonight's two simple results—Taddeo X, Díaz Y—they may not be obvious. But the election will still be able to tell us something. Certain results could eliminate certain 2018 theories, and a select few results would offer unambiguous lessons. If Taddeo wins by 17 points or better (i.e., she does better than Clinton), all three questions will have been answered in Democrats' favor. If Díaz outperforms Artiles's 10-point win from 2016, Republicans will be dancing a jig of glee.

If you're looking for a more definitive lesson to take away from tonight's results, though, you're in luck. If nothing else, this election is likely to foreshadow the open race for Florida's 27th Congressional District, which is being vacated by Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in 2018. Both FL-27 and SD-40 voted similarly in the 2016 and 2012 presidential races (both moving toward Democrats), both are three-quarters Hispanic, and both are open seats. In fact, they share many of the exact same voters: 24.1% of voters in FL-27 live in SD-40, and 34.7% of voters in SD-40 live in FL-27. Whichever party prevails tonight has to be considered the favorite in FL-27 next November—and that's one-twenty-fourth of Democrats' way to a majority.

A Tale of Two San Diegos; Which Will Pick the Next Mayor?

It was seven months ago—July 11, 2013—that Bob Filner first faced accusations of sexual harassment that led to his resignation as San Diego mayor. It felt like an eternity, but that six-week scandal pales in comparison to the time it's taken San Diego to pick a new one. That ends today, February 11, 2014, runoff day in the special election to choose the leader of the country's eighth-largest city—a post more powerful, in terms of citizens governed, than governor of Maine.

A November 19 preliminary round narrowed the field to two city councilmen: Democrat David Alvárez and Republican Kevin Faulconer. Alvárez, the race's labor-backed progressive, was a surprise qualifier, taking the Democratic "nomination" most expected to go to moderate Nathan Fletcher. As a result, Alvárez has had a harder time winning over the political middle, which is more important in San Diego than in most urban areas; Democrat Mike Aguirre has endorsed Faulconer, for instance. However, Alvárez is probably better positioned than Fletcher would have been to activate the city's grassroots on the left: organized labor and Latinos in particular. While Faulconer personally has outraised Alvárez personally, Democratic independent expenditures are sitting on much more cash.

Twenty years ago, that progressive coalition could never have won a municipal election in San Diego. Unlike virtually every other big city in the United States, San Diego is not a hotbed of liberalism and a bottomless pit of Democratic votes. Historically, it has actually been quite conservative—electing just one Democratic mayor between 1971 and 2012—thanks in large part to its military heritage. The Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Navy (including the famous Pacific Fleet), and thousands of defense contractors all have a presence in the city to this day. Good defense-related jobs have also created a naturally conservative upper crust in suburbs like La Jolla, which, unlike as in most major cities, are within the city limits (and thus eligible to vote for mayor).

But, like the rest of the country, the City of San Diego is changing. Conservatives are switching their registrations to decline-to-state or moving out to the exurbs, leading to a net loss of 50,000 Republicans since 2000. Meanwhile, minority voters are the city's fastest-growing cohort, pumping up Democratic registration numbers by 9,000 since 2000. The new San Diego has amassed more and more political clout as its numbers have swelled, throwing the city's longtime conservative identity into doubt. Instead, today San Diego is as swingy as Ohio or Washoe County—and it's brought the mayoral election to within the margin of error.

So who's going to win this nail-biter battle for San Diego's soul? It all comes down to which San Diego turns out. We'll be able to see this very starkly as the results start trickling in—because San Diego's cultural divide has sharp geographic boundaries to it. It's surprisingly simple; parts of the city north of Interstate 8—which bisects San Diego just north of downtown—are Republican strongholds, while precincts south of I-8 vote Democratic, as if flipping a lightswitch. A tool by Joe Yerardi at inewsource shows what that looked like in the November 19, 2013, preliminary election (image courtesy of the Liberator blog):

At a single glance even someone who has never been to San Diego (as I have not) can distinguish San Diego's urban precincts from its suburban ones. Physically separated by the interstate as well as the narrow San Diego River, the two San Diegos are equally far apart in their political preferences. A SurveyUSA poll, conducted January 20–23, found that voters who live south of Interstate 8 planned to vote for Alvárez by 20 points (56% to 36%). North of the freeway, voters preferred Faulconer by an even larger 61%-to-34% margin.

What accounts for the polarization? As already mentioned, northerly communes like La Jolla are full of affluent, moderate Republicans; across Interstate 8, though, it feels more like Cambridge or Berkeley. These are the walkable, trendy neighborhoods of the young: Normal Heights, with a median age of 31; North Park, named a premier American hipster haunt. But, mostly, it is about race. The turf north of I-8 is as white as the Padres' home uniforms, while the city's Latinos remain confined on the side closer to the Mexican border. Once San Diego's gentrified urban neighborhoods give way, a transformation takes hold:

That map is courtesy of the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, whose national Racial Dot Map is quite simply the most important tool on the internet today. The map makes painfully obvious the where and why of the new San Diego. The city is home to hundreds of thousands of Latinos, overlapping almost exactly with its Democratic precincts south of Interstate 8. Once you get south of the Martin Luther King Jr. Freeway (Route 94), there is virtually no one white to be found. It is these precincts—once inconsequential and outshone—that in the new San Diego can be mobilized enough to drive David Alvárez to victory. The race's final SurveyUSA poll found Latinos breaking 61% to 32% for Alvárez; whites preferred Faulconer 58% to 39%. Sound familiar?

Unfortunately for Alvárez, it remains difficult to get these voters to the polls—or at least more difficult than it is for Faulconer to turn out his well-to-do base. The conventional wisdom is that Faulconer has done well among voters who cast their ballots early—as 170,000 people, or about half the expected turnout, already have. According to that most recent poll (which had the race overall at Faulconer +1), Faulconer was up by five points with early voters.

That means we'll have a good idea where the race stands pretty early on in the night. When the early-voting results are released (hopefully right at 8pm PT, when polls close), if Faulconer leads by at least four to eight points, he has built a formidable firewall against Alvárez's Election Day ground game, widely viewed as superior thanks to organized labor and Democratic community organizing. If not, we may well be in for another night like the preliminary election: one where Alvárez gets closer and closer as it gets later and later, until he comes from behind for the win on the very last vote dump.

More is on the line tonight than a simple mayoralty, however. This special election is set up pretty perfectly for the GOP. A Democratic incumbent was caught in a sex scandal, giving them a shot in a low-turnout special election at a seat that is usually only up for grabs during minority-turnout-heavy presidential years. It is a chance for the GOP to recreate something more like the off-year 2005 mayoral race, when 70% of voters lived north of Interstate 8, and less like the 2012 election, when just 57% of voters did.

Yet it's not looking like they'll get there. In this onetime conservative stronghold, the Republican candidate is still fighting for his life—suggesting it's less about the turnout conditions and more about simple, inexorable demographic change. If Faulconer cannot win under these conditions, Republicans may never win City Hall here again—and that, in turn, would signal the passing, once and for all, of the old San Diego.

Leading Los Angeles

Ever met the president? Your US senator? Your congressman? Didn't think so.

What about your mayor or local officials? That's a lot more likely, and that's reassuring. Most of the policy that affects you in your day-to-day life is probably made on the state or municipal level. I've long advocated for a predominantly "local-out" view of politics, and I'd argue that mayoral elections are more important than most others, even on the federal level—possibly second only to the presidential.

If I'm right, we have an extremely important election coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, May 21, when the second-biggest city in the US will choose its first new mayor in eight years. Los Angeles actually had its initial mayoral election on March 5, but like many cities' elections, the race is thrown to a runoff if no candidate reaches 50%. Tuesday will be that runoff, pitting the top two candidates against one another for the big prize. The winner will have some large—and larger-than-life—shoes to fill, as the term-limited, outgoing mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, is a popular showman and potential candidate for higher office.

Although Los Angeles municipal elections are technically nonpartisan, both qualifying candidates ally themselves with the Democratic Party. Forty-two-year-old Eric Garcetti has served on the LA City Council since 2001 and as president of the council since 2006. The son of a former DA, he is an impressive mishmash of local ethnicities, including being both Mexican-American and Jewish.

Voters' alternative is Wendy Greuel, who has worn many hats in municipal government: city councilor, mayoral aide, and, currently, city controller (meaning she has won a citywide election before). She also has some serious connections—to Bill Clinton, in whose administration she worked, and to Hollywood, having worked as a studio executive at Dreamworks. She has the endorsements of both Clinton and Steven Spielberg. Greuel is white but would break barriers in other ways: she'd be Tinseltown's first female mayor.

In an environment where the two candidates agree on almost all the actual issues, the "issues" the race has been fought over have been rather superficial. Mainly, the campaign has been about who is supposedly in the pocket of which special interest—and, with the amount of independent spending the election has seen, this has resonated with voters. (I highly recommend this excellent graphic from the Los Angeles Times to see exactly which interest groups are spending for whom.) The knock against Garcetti has been that he is a little too close for comfort with big business—but by far the biggest shadow in the race has been cast by unions, who have spent overwhelmingly for Greuel. They have accounted for almost $6 million of the $7.7 million that has been raised by pro-Greuel super PACs. (In contrast, pro-Garcetti outside groups have raised only $2.7 million.) While this has led to a very effective line of attack against Greuel—that she has been bought by union interests—the outside spending has also kept her mayoral chances afloat. Although Garcetti's ($8.1 million) and Greuel's ($7.1 million) campaign committees have raised roughly comparable sums, Greuel's campaign has virtually run out of money here in the final stretch.

Other controversies have flowed out from these union connections. Greuel's union allies have taken fire for distributing flyers and circulating sound trucks in Hispanic neighborhoods that claim Greuel supports a $15 minimum wage. In reality, that wage proposal would only apply to hotel workers, but that was allegedly unclear the way the unions phrased it—perhaps, opponents claim, purposefully trying to mislead LA's Hispanic poor. However, it's not clear if this tactic has backfired on Greuel.

A final manufactured "issue" that is unlikely to make a difference is the still-extant division between Obama Democrats and Hillary Clinton Democrats. Mirroring an internal dynamic that has played itself out in other Democratic primaries, Garcetti supported the president early in the 2008 primaries, while Greuel was behind Clinton. Garcetti has trumpeted his friendship with Obama all campaign long, but with no endorsement and with Greuel obviously now an Obama supporter as well, too much has changed in five years to make that predictive in any way.

So who has come out on top of all this? In the March 5 primary that winnowed the field, Garcetti received 33.1% of the vote, 29.0% went to Greuel, and other, eliminated candidates amassed the remaining 37.9%. Since then, Garcetti has averaged a similar overall lead in polling, although for a period of about two weeks, the candidates were essentially tied (and may still be, depending on how you view a USC Price/LA Times poll released last Friday):



The narrative of the race—which, as we all know, can diverge from the data—has generally been that of a Garcetti campaign on cruise control while Greuel has stumbled. In late March, her bid was seen in chaos when four prominent members of her team left the campaign. More generally, Greuel is seen as the candidate of more dispassionate, moderate voters, while Garcetti is the "Obama-esque candidate" of young activists and Hispanics.

There's a lot more ambiguity when you actually get into it, however. A SurveyUSA poll found that all age groups were split right down the middle in their support. That poll also found that white and Hispanic voters tend to back Garcetti, with African-Americans and Asians behind Greuel—except another poll found that Garcetti's core groups were Asians and Latinos, while Greuel held leads with whites and blacks. That poll, in turn, found a strong gender gap in favor of Greuel—but the most recent poll found Garcetti ahead with the fairer sex. And finally, all three polls showed that it's actually Garcetti, by a comfortable margin, who is the preferred candidate of Angeleno Republicans.

How much do each of these groups matter in assembling a winning coalition, and where are they all concentrated? Let's take a tour of the city to get acquainted with its demographic layout. According to the American Community Survey, the City of Los Angeles is 48.1% Hispanic or Latino, 28.9% white, 11.4% Asian, and 9.6% black or African-American. As the home of almost four million people, Los Angeles has among the most complex political geography you can have in only 469 square miles, so we'll keep our characterizations on the simple side. (For intricate detail on each of LA's diverse neighborhoods, check out the Los Angeles Times's great "Mapping LA" project.)

Look at a map of the Los Angeles area and it's almost never clear what's actually within the City of Los Angeles. Often treated like their own cities, "suburbs" like Hollywood and Pacific Palisades are actually neighborhoods within the LA city limits. Meanwhile, places like Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and a couple others that appear to be in the heart of Los Angeles are actually their own cities—enclaves completely surrounded by the main city. For greatest ease, let's start in Central LA, which is almost certainly where the big letters reading "LOS ANGELES" are on your aforementioned map. Slightly inland, Central LA is extremely diverse, both ethnically and socioeconomically, but it is also solidly blue. Comfortable members of the creative class make their homes in Hollywood Hills and Silver Lake (home of Eric Garcetti), voting Democrat in keeping with their artsiness; moneyed residents of Fairfax and Hancock Park vote Republican in keeping with their wealth. However, a vast majority of this district's vote is in the areas where poverty reigns without prejudice: between the skyscrapers of Downtown (a sizable black community), below the calligraphied signs of Koreatown (a pocket of Asian immigrants), and amid the smell of ethnic food in Westlake (home of many Latinos, who also make up pluralities in most of Central LA's other neighborhoods). Even glamorous Hollywood is home to a mostly poor population (though it is whiter than its aforementioned eastern neighbors). Like the rest of America's urban poor, these people are reliable Democratic votes. Furthermore, since many of them are Latino and are represented by him on the city council, they probably favor Garcetti—at least they did in March. However, this is one area where Greuel and her union supporters are hoping to make inroads; they are airing negative ads against Garcetti aimed at Latinos, and these poor neighborhoods are the ones where the minimum-wage promises—real or not—could change some minds.

West of Central LA, extending all the way to the Pacific, is what's known as the Westside. In a way, the Westside is an extension of Hancock Park or Silver Lake in its political tastes: well-educated, middle- and upper-class voters who tend to vote for Democrats. Intellectual Westwood, where UCLA is, is in this area; so is Venice Beach, which retains its hippie vibe. The Westside is also home to fiscally conservative but socially liberal voters in affluent communities like Pacific Palisades (usually tips Democrat) and Westchester (usually tips Republican). Garcetti, seen as a pro-business Democrat, is a great fit for this area. Look for him to build upon his already-respectable showing here in the primary.

East of Central LA, on the other hand, is the correspondingly named Eastside, along with Northeast LA to, um, the northeast. Uncorrespondingly, these areas are almost completely Latino—and thus all voted strongly for Garcetti in March. However, the area isn't entirely monolithic. Within this strip of land, from Eagle Rock in the north to Boyle Heights in the south, incomes tend to drop as you go south. This means the Eastside generally might be fertile ground for Greuel to steal away some Garcetti base votes as she's trying to do in Central LA. However, well-off Latinos in Northeast LA probably are lost causes for her—they can relate so strongly to Garcetti.

To the south is the historically African-American district of South Los Angeles. Much of what's left of LA's black population still resides here, especially in western neighborhoods like Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw and Hyde Park, but overall this is another heavily Hispanic area. More relevantly, it is among the most dangerous, poorest, least educated urban areas in the nation—famous to the rest of us as South Central LA (home of the Watts district). Another Democratic stronghold, it's unclear which Democrat it will favor on Tuesday; in March, it sided decisively with its city councilor, Jan Perry, who finished fourth overall. Perry endorsed Garcetti after losing, and certainly it makes sense that the Hispanic vote here will go to him. However, polls agree that African-Americans are in Greuel's corner this time around, and blacks in this area have shown a reluctance to vote for Hispanic candidates in past mayoral elections. South LA should be competitive, and Greuel's people will certainly be looking at their margins here on election night—as should you.

From South LA, a thin strip of land that is still the City of Los Angeles slithers south past Torrance and Compton, all the way to the ocean, where it widens and becomes the Harbor district. This near-exclave is home to the middle class of all races, and it is also more politically diverse than the neighborhoods we've covered so far. For instance, the plurality-Hispanic Wilmington neighborhood is mostly Democratic, but the seaside San Pedro actually boasts a respectable Republican population. This area will probably be a wash; perhaps a slight Garcetti advantage won't matter because the vote share here is the lowest of the six regions we're touring today.

Thus far, it's seemed like most neighborhoods have been all Garcetti, all the time—and that's certainly a testament to his frontrunner status. However, I've saved the biggest region for last. The San Fernando Valley sprawls massively to the north of the Westside and northwest of Central LA; depending on turnout, it probably holds from 40% to 50% of the Los Angeles vote share. The Valley is the suburban purgatory that everyone pictures when they think of LA. With so many people, it also features quite a few political opinions, although on the whole it's the most conservative/moderate area in the city. Like most of suburbia, it is also solidly middle class, although you can certainly find both extremes here too. Garcetti did just OK in the Valley, running strongest in the chain of middle-class Hispanic communities on its east edge (e.g., Pacoima, Sun Valley, North Hollywood, as well as more westerly Reseda) that are the Valley's most consistent sources of Democratic votes. Then, on the Valley's western edge, you'll find LA's well-hidden Republican voters. Rich neighborhoods like Woodland Hills and Porter Ranch were where Republican Kevin James got his 16.3% of the vote in the March election; now those votes are up for grabs. Maybe, as the polls indicate, they'll switch allegiances to Garcetti—but maybe they'll also look to their neighbors for inspiration and go Greuel. Wendy's support was widespread across San Fernando, basically picking up any votes that didn't go James west of the 405 and any votes that didn't go Garcetti east of the 405. She won most of the precincts in the Valley in March and did particularly well near her home in Studio City. She should win them again tomorrow, but, in what is clearly a pretty politically balanced region, by how much? Like in South LA, she'll need to win convincingly here to make up for deficits elsewhere in the city.

So can Wendy Greuel convert enough inner-city votes? Who wins the conservative floaters, especially in the Valley? How decisive will the black vote be? The way you see each of these questions resolving says a lot about how you think the results will shake out tomorrow night.

Personally, I buy into a picture painted by the most recent USC Price/LA Times poll. That survey, which had Garcetti up by seven points, showed that Greuel was weak—even losing to Garcetti—on her supposed home turf in the Valley. The poll's sponsors postulated that Greuel's associations with unions were undermining her support among this relatively conservative bloc—certainly plausible, given how the campaign narrative has harped on those connections. It is certainly true that Greuel has no clear path to victory without the Valley, her most natural source of votes and one of two areas where turnout is likely to be higher. (To make matters worse, the other, the Westside, is solid Garcetti territory.) Fortunately for Greuel, I do see her clinching the black vote, which should make election night more competitive. But I don't think it will be enough for her to get more than 45% of the total vote.

To be clear, though, this election remains a tossup. In a sentence, the result hinges on whether that USC Price/LA Times poll is correct or instead an outlier from a trend that theretofore had the race tied. We'll find out tomorrow night—hopefully.

Your Quick and Dirty Guide to the #SC01 Special Election

Unlike our first special election this year, the race for the South Carolina First—vacated by Tim Scott when he was appointed to Jim DeMint's Senate seat—could sport a competitive general election, a rarity in the deep-red Palmetto State. The First District came within four points of electing a Democrat in 2008 (admittedly, under different district lines), and this year's almost-certain Democratic nominee, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, is a formidable candidate—in case you've been living under a rock, she has access to the deep pockets and national microphone of her brother Stephen.

But in this R+11 district, the likely next congressman from the Lowcountry remains the victor of the Republican primary, which takes place here on Tuesday. The problem is that we have no idea who's going to be that victor—or if we'll even know by Wednesday, thanks to South Carolina primary rules that require the winning candidate to get a majority of the vote. (With a field of 16 Republican candidates, it seems likely that we'll be forced into a runoff between the top two; that runoff would occur on April 2.)

The most famous of these candidates is, of course, ex-governor, former rumored presidential candidate, and Appalachian Trail hiker Mark Sanford. After his 2009 affair with an Argentine woman (whom he has since left his family to get engaged to), Sanford actually served out the rest of his gubernatorial term, retiring silently into the night in 2011. Only two years later, he's apparently ready for a political comeback, and he's mounting it in the same district where he got his start (he was the First District's congressman from 1995 to 2001). Right now, Sanford is the near-certain frontrunner in the 2013 special just because of name recognition (he's famous with a national audience, so imagine how crisply South Carolinians remember him). He also has a boatload of money; he already had approximately $120,000 left over from his old congressional campaign account, and he raised $334,397 more in January and February alone.

The other 15 Republicans are therefore probably racing for the second spot in the runoff. We can safely rule out probably half of this group, but, excitingly, there is a lot of uncertainty as to how seriously, exactly, to take each of the so-called serious candidates. One formidable contender, and probably the one with the second-highest name recognition, is Teddy Turner, who has distanced himself from the liberal views of his famous father and namesake. Thanks to his own wealth, Turner raised even more than Sanford ($376,433) during the same period. Former Charleston City Council member Curtis Bostic is also generating buzz—though not cash—as a conservative grassroots candidate. But he may be hurt by the revelation that he actually doesn't live in the First District. (Awkward.)

A trio of Columbia veterans are the remaining realistic candidates, thanks in large part to loans to their own campaigns. Former State Senator John Kuhn loaned himself $500K for a total take of $550,103 in two months. He has gone after Sanford the most aggressively, even boasting about the longevity of his marriage at a recent debate. State Representative Chip Limehouse collected $540,115, including a $400,000 loan to his own campaign. A member of an old Charleston family, Limehouse has received several high-profile endorsements (though these are often meaningless in a race like this). And State Senator Larry Grooms raked in $323,815, only $100,000 of which was a personal loan.

It's anyone's guess where these candidates stand in relation to one another; there have been no public polls of the race whatsoever. All the data we have to go off are in the form of internal polling whose specific numbers were never actually reported—we just have vague approximations from (probably biased) anonymous sources! The great local reporter Gina Smith has talked to these people about "several" polls, and she relays that Sanford holds a comfortable lead in all of them with about a third of the vote—not nearly enough to avoid a runoff. Apparently, however, the polls disagree about who is in second, with Limehouse, Turner, and Kuhn mentioned as the "most often" runners-up. Grooms and Bostic are also "making gains," she reports.

Unapologetically opinionated website FITSNews also talked to some sources about some specific polls. You probably shouldn't heed these as much as Smith's holistic approach, but they're worth sharing. A poll reported on March 6 found that Sanford's "forgiveness" ad (attempting to address his affair) hurt him, dragging him from the mid-thirties to the mid-twenties. Bostic was apparently the candidate who benefited, shooting up to the "upper teens." (Indeed, all reports are that Bostic has momentum. Could the grassroots candidate eke out a win?) In a close third was Turner, and in a close fourth was Grooms. Limehouse slid into fifth place, although FITSNews registers some serious doubt that he could be so low. A week later, FITSNews shared a separate poll with some slightly different results. Sanford was back near 30%, while Turner and Bostic shared second in the "low teens." Limehouse and Grooms occupied the "high single digits."

Here's an overview of the polling that's hopefully easier to digest. Remember, these are all internal polls (and we don't even know whose campaign did which poll), so take them with huge grains of salt.

	3/6	3/13	Gina Smith roundup
Mark Sanford	~23–27%	~27–29%	~31–36%
Teddy Turner	~14–18%	~11–15%	"most often following" Sanford
Curtis Bostic	~16–19%	~11–15%	"making gains"
John Kuhn	N/A	N/A	"most often following" Sanford
Larry Grooms	~12–17%	~6–9%	"making gains"
Chip Limehouse	~3–9%	~6–9%	"most often following" Sanford

So who has the edge for second place? The composition of the district could be a clue. If you look at a map of the district, you'll see it hugs the southern half of the South Carolina coastline, from Francis Marion National Forest down to Hilton Head. However, there's an odd growth to the district that protrudes north of Charleston, pushing inland to Lake Moultrie (but conveniently bypassing heavily black—and Democratic—North Charleston). According to Dave Wasserman's excellent spreadsheet, the district is 70.1% white, 19.4% black, and 6.5% Hispanic, although in a Republican primary, that's not likely to matter a whole lot.

By far, most of the votes in the district can be found in Charleston County; the state's largest city and the county that runs up and down the coast around it accounted for 41.3% of the total votes cast in the 2012 congressional race here. Three of the frontrunners—Sanford, Kuhn, and Limehouse—hail from Charleston itself, while a fourth (Turner) lives in the adjacent suburb of Mount Pleasant. Now, Sanford is likely to draw his votes equally from all corners of the district due to his general name recognition. Turner has never held elected office and is not better known in Mount Pleasant than elsewhere, so he too seems unlikely to get a regional boost; indeed, his support should be wide thanks to airing more TV ads than anyone else. That leaves Kuhn and Limehouse to split what's left of the Charleston vote—so about 10% of the total district vote, at most, each. That squares with their positions in the polling, and it's simply not enough to break the top-two threshold by itself. Since they don't figure to pick up much more support outside Charleston, I'd say the math just isn't there for those two.

Grooms is an interesting case because he has the district's third-largest county, Berkeley, all to himself. A native of Bonneau, in the northern protuberance part of the district, Grooms could lock up a significant share of the 19.5% of 2012 voters who live in Berkeley County. The problem may be Curtis Bostic. As the grassroots Tea Party candidate, Bostic could also stand to win a lot of votes in this, the district's reddest county in 2012. (I'm not counting the district's sliver of Colleton County, where Tim Scott received 540 of 649 total votes cast.) Not living in the district himself, Bostic doesn't really have a regional base, but look for him to run up the count in some of the district's more rural areas thanks to his evangelical base. While Grooms probably does have a golden opportunity in Berkeley County, it's close to impossible to eke out a win working exclusively out of an area containing only a fifth of the total vote share.

A real wild card is Beaufort County, which is the district's second-most populous area and home to Hilton Head Island. No candidates hail from this region on the southern end of the South Carolina coast, so theoretically those votes are up for grabs. Look for the candidates with the district-wide strategies, like Sanford and Turner, to do well here. (Bostic maybe less so, since this is the second bluest county in the district... Although remember this is relative, since every county is solidly Republican.)

The bottom line is this: anyone who thinks they can tell you with any kind of certainty who the two runoff finalists will be is conning you. But right now, given the regional splits of too many of the candidates, I have to lean toward the two who have district-wide appeal. My for-entertainment-purposes-only guess: Sanford 35%, Turner 20%—two points ahead of Bostic in third place.

What You Need to Know Before the #IL02 Special Election

Even in regular election years, individual House races rarely get much attention—so you know you're getting down into the depths of obscurity when you're dealing with a special House election. On February 26, the voters of the new Illinois Second Congressional District will choose their next US representative, succeeding Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned due to mental illness and a now-exploding ethics investigation. True, February 26 is just a primary, but in this heavily Democratic district (a Cook PVI of D+27), the winner of Tuesday's Democratic primary is guaranteed a coronation on the general-election date of April 9.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, there are no less than 15 Democrats running for this seat that hasn't been open since 1995. That's daunting for election watchers like us who want to know what's going on and who's likely to win. Thankfully, Baseballot is here to grant you a crash course before you tune in on Tuesday.

I know the Illinois Second about as well as you can without being a local; my mother grew up there, and I visited family there frequently while growing up. The first thing to know is that it's an extremely diverse district, both geographically and demographically. IL-02's northern border sits on East 53rd St. in urban Chicago—Hyde Park, to be precise, President's Obama's home neighborhood (although he just narrowly avoids being in the district and the awkward questioning that would surely come with it). A small, well-to-do neighborhood for professors at the nearby University of Chicago, mostly white Hyde Park quickly gives way to the poor, almost completely African-American South Side. Despite physically taking up only the northern tip of the district, the South Side constitutes a hefty chunk of its vote share; Chicago accounted for 26% of the total votes cast for Congress in this district in 2012 (76,506 out of 297,712 total).

As you drive south on I-94 past Lake Calumet, you cross the Chicago city limits into the core suburbs of the Illinois Second. Cities like Calumet City, Dolton, Harvey, and South Holland are also majority African-American, though unlike the virtually homogenous South Side, they retain some of the white voters who were their traditional residents a generation or two ago. Currently, the dividing line is I-80/I-294, which crosses I-94 about 15 miles south of where we began in Hyde Park. The change is evident immediately to a southbound driver: suburban commerce, strip malls, and densely packed cookie-cutter homes give way to forests, wide-open spaces, and, yes, cornfields. Most communities south of I-80/I-294, such as Homewood and Lansing, remain white enclaves. By the time you hit Will County just south of Chicago Heights, you've driven past 52% (154,284 of 297,712 votes cast in the 2012 congressional race) of the district's voters since crossing over from Chicago. Roughly half of that suburban vote share is in the mostly black northern suburbs, roughly half is in the mostly white southern suburbs, but all of it is solidly Democratic.

In stark contrast, Will County, from Steger and Crete all the way down to Peotone and Beecher, is rural, white, and Republican. Only 8% of the district's vote resides here, despite a land area as big as all the turf we had covered to the north. Another 20 miles south, through Kankakee County, and the district finally comes to an end—the low population density and farmland sharply different than where we began. Anchored by the relatively large city of Kankakee, Kankakee County accounts for a larger 15% of the district by 2012 vote share, but it votes even more reliably with the GOP. Kankakee's sizable black population (about 11,000 strong) accounts for virtually every Democratic vote cast down here. Overall, the Illinois Second is 29.6% white, 55.3% black, and 12.8% Latino.

The stage is set; next, meet the cast of characters—though certainly not all of them. Eleven of the 15 Democratic candidates are pretty clearly hopeless. The main two names to remember are former State Representative Robin Kelly and former Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, the undisputed frontrunners. Thought to be a dark horse by some is Alderman Anthony Beale, although in this blogger's opinion, a win by him would be a real shocker. Pulling up the rear of the viable candidates but managing to separate himself from the riffraff is former Congressman Mel Reynolds, who actually preceded Jackson in this seat but had to resign himself due to charges of statutory rape. (Two other potentially potent candidates, State Senator Napoleon Harris and State Senator Toi Hutchinson, have dropped out in recent weeks.)

In this majority-black district, the only white name of the six above is Halvorson; a roughly proportional two of them (Beale and Reynolds) are from Chicago city proper. Halvorson is from idyllic Crete, part of Will County. Kelly is from Matteson, one of the few mainly black communities south of I-80/I-294. Kelly is also the best-financed candidate; she raised $200,000 by December 31, unfortunately the most recent figure we'll have before the election. Before dropping out, Hutchinson has raised the second most at $135,000; interestingly, Halvorson had raised only about as much as Beale ($50,000). Reynolds hasn't even raised enough to trigger an FEC report.

It is on December 31 that our play begins. At the start of the new year, Halvorson had real reason to be confident, despite those low fundraising totals: in a jumbled, yet-to-be-defined field, she had the name recognition and thus the advantage. The old (pre-redistricting) congresswoman for the southern half of the Illinois Second before losing in the Republican wave of 2010, Halvorson also benefited from a split in the black vote between Kelly, Hutchinson, Beale, and the other black candidates in the race.

Polling at the time bore this out. Both the Kelly campaign and the Hutchinson campaign released internal polls in early January:

	Kelly poll	Hutchinson poll
Debbie Halvorson	25%	16%
Toi Hutchinson	16%	12%
Robin Kelly	15%	8%
Anthony Beale	10%	5%
Napoleon Harris	9%	7%
Mel Reynolds	8%	7%
Conducted	Jan. 3–7	Jan. 8–10
Sample	500 LV	400 LV

Bear in mind that each campaign's poll is probably biased by five or so points in their candidate's favor, but a clear picture of the race emerges: Hutchinson and Kelly, with their fundraising advantages, were poised to strike. Kelly's poll also showed her with leads among African-American women and suburban African-Americans; in such a black district, that indicated she had more room to grow. Importantly, Kelly's poll also showed one more thing: a deep dislike within the district for the National Rifle Association.

Alongside typical bread-and-butter topics like seniors or the construction of a third airport for Chicagoland in Peotone, one issue that quickly took hold in this heavily urban district was gun control. Especially after the high-profile shooting of a 15-year-old Chicagoan who had performed at President Obama's inauguration, Kelly emphasized that her "F" rating from the NRA made her the best candidate to stop gun violence in the district. Kelly also didn't miss a chance to point out that her two main rivals, Halvorson and Hutchinson, both had received "A" grades from the organization. Halvorson also didn't do herself any favors by continuing to oppose the assault-weapons ban—although Hutchinson quickly saw the error of her ways and distanced herself from the NRA.

By February 1, the momentum in the race was clearly Kelly's. First, Napoleon Harris dropped out, endorsing Kelly and helping to consolidate some of the African-American vote. Then Kelly scored her real coup—an endorsement and $2.1 million from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun super PAC. Then again, you probably knew that already, since Bloomberg's involvement nationalized the special election around the issue of gun control and made that the defining issue of the campaign for good.

Courtesy of Mayor Bloomberg, commercials lambasting Halvorson and Hutchinson have been airing nonstop in Chicago since early February, and they took their toll. The Kelly campaign released another internal poll, conducted February 4–5 of 400 likely voters, that flaunted her new frontrunner status:

	Vote Share	Change from Jan.
Robin Kelly	26%	+11%
Debbie Halvorson	22%	–3%
Toi Hutchinson	20%	+4%
Anthony Beale	10%	None
Mel Reynolds	5%	–3%

The poll also showed that Kelly was now the preferred candidate of African-American voters overall and anti-gun voters overall. As the dialogue in the campaign and debates continued to center on gun control, Kelly looked unstoppable. The current was so strong that even one of the supposed frontrunners saw no path to victory; on February 17, just nine days before Election Day, Hutchinson dropped out of the race and endorsed Kelly. Word was that internal Hutchinson polls had found Kelly with an insurmountable double-digit lead over the field.

Critics cried foul, as they saw a last-minute backroom deal to anoint a single black candidate and tell the African-American community to get behind her en masse. However, Hutchinson hails from—and represents in the State Senate—the southern part of the district, and her strongest base of support proved to be the (predominantly white) voters in this area. To Kelly's chagrin, there is good reason to think Hutchinson's voters were predisposed to switch to Halvorson, not Kelly, after her withdrawal. (In fact, Hutchinson was once Halvorson's chief of staff and now represents Halvorson's old State Senate district.)

What's more, in recent days, Kelly has experienced the backlash typical of a frontrunner. Halvorson and others have been trying to paint Bloomberg's involvement as a liability, urging voters not to let the election "get bought" by outside forces. On Thursday, news also broke that Kelly was facing an ethics probe over timesheet abuse while working for the Illinois treasurer's office. Since this news became public, Kelly has not and will not participate in any more debates—no doubt hoping to freeze the race as is, but also avoiding tough questions about the probe.

Oddly, that last hyperlink references a We Ask America poll taken recently in the district, but that poll exists nowhere else on the internet. Therefore, the most recent snapshot of the race is also the only public poll taken in the race to my knowledge. Taken February 17–19 (before the ethics news), it shows a tightening race: its 500 participants gave Halvorson 21% to Kelly's 17%—a statistical tie.

Tomorrow, as the cliché goes, the only poll that matters takes place: Election Day. It certainly looks like a nailbiter, as Halvorson seems to be getting a second wind at exactly the right time. Still, it's worth paying attention to the raw numbers—specifically, how Halvorson's support is pretty static (between 21% and 25% in almost every poll). To put it bluntly, this is her ceiling: the number of likely white voters in the Democratic primary.

Like any election, the result will come down to turnout. For Halvorson to win, that means turning out white voters; for Kelly to win, it means consolidating the support of enough black voters to break the 21–25% threshold. A real X-factor in Tuesday's turnout, however, will be a snowstorm expected to buffet the region tomorrow with heavy winds and three to five inches of snow. Turnout for special elections is already extremely low, making them unpredictable as is; this storm could push turnout into the single digits.

Whom will that help? My money is on Kelly, as her support comes mainly from the black voters who live in more densely packed areas. Simply put, polling places in urban and dense suburban areas are closer and easier to get to than those in the rural areas where Halvorson is drawing her support. Just because of Halvorson supporters' reliance on their cars and driving longer distances to vote, I expect that she'll be hurt the most by the weather. My final prediction: Kelly by six.