Today, voters will head to the polls to vote for a congressional representative to fill the vacancy created by former Representative George Santos’ expulsion. Both Republicans and Democrats expect a close race, given the extent of their recent investments in the district. With control of the House as narrow as it stands, both parties have particularly high interest in the outcome of this special election.
Both candidates, Republican County Legislator Mazi Pilip and former Representative Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, have reason to feel cautiously optimistic about their chances of winning the seat. Republicans can point to the gains made in New York since the last presidential election, shifting public sentiment on the migrant crisis that has come to define the issue landscape in this election, and the momentum Pilip has built of late — although she began with a substantial polling and spending deficit, all of the three recent public surveys show both candidates polling within the margin of error.
Democrats may counter by underscoring that the fundamentals of the race favor them. Joe Biden won the seat by 8% in 2020 against Donald Trump, Democratic ex-incumbent Tom Suozzi is a substantially stronger candidate than 2022 nominee Robert Zimmerman was, and special election voters are consistently more Democratic than the average voter is even after controlling for demographic factors, as the New York Times has shown.
In the three public polls taken of this race in the past two weeks, Suozzi leads by an average margin of 3% — within the margin of error, but a lead nevertheless. Moreover, Democrats enjoy a substantial advertising advantage in this district, per AdImpact, with Democratic-aligned groups outspending GOP groups $13.5M to $7.9M.
We believe Democrats have a stronger case, and Tom Suozzi is the favorite to win this election. While we do not deny the clear possibility of a Mazi Pilip victory, none of the available data points to this being the modal outcome. For a special election in a Biden +8 seat where the Democrats have a 3:2 spending advantage and a 3-point polling lead, the available evidence points to a clear, but not prohibitive Democratic edge.
While Republicans may have a few local advantages, they are not enough to make Pilip the favorite tonight. Our model, which blends polling and fundamentals, gives Suozzi 2-to-1 odds of winning (or a win probability of roughly 67%), with a D+4.6 modeled margin.
Long Island has seen some heavily Republican breaks as of late. Although Biden won this Clinton +5 district by 8 points in 2020, it swung sharply to the right in 2022, with Lee Zeldin winning it by 12 points in his 6-point statewide loss to Kathy Hochul. The coattails from Zeldin’s massive overperformance carried George Santos to victory in his congressional bid that November, with the now-expelled representative winning against Robert Zimmerman by 7.5 points despite being handily outspent.
Republicans will hope that their 2022 overperformance is indicative of a trend rather than an aberration caused by low Democratic enthusiasm and a horrible, cycle-specific persuasion environment for their rivals. Notably, many of the same narratives that dominated the 2022 gubernatorial race have reemerged in the waning days of the campaign, with both sides launching a furious blitz of ads about the southern border.
This time, the key differences are Zeldin’s absence from top of the ticket and Suozzi’s status as the Democratic nominee. Suozzi’s past overperformances reflect his status as a known and broadly-liked figure in the district, as shown by his prior Split Ticket wins-above-replacement scores of +3 and +4 in 2018 and 2020, respectively. In fact, our modeling suggests that if he had chosen to run for re-election to his House seat in 2022 instead of challenging Kathy Hochul for the governorship, Democrats might not have lost the seat at all.
Pilip, meanwhile, is Suozzi’s opposite in many ways. A low-profile county legislator, she was selected by the GOP establishment as the nominee in lieu of a primary, in accordance with New York’s rules for special election candidacies. Moreover, she did not begin advertising until earlier this month, leaving her little time to build up name recognition in this expensive media market. If she wins, it will be in no small part due to the late flood of advertisements booked by the GOP, which have helped them substantially close the financial gap.
Further complicating matters is a nor’easter which has hit the district. While the impact of weather is unclear, it is more likely than not that a severe weather event would depress Election Day turnout. Given that the early vote leans blue, any drop in turnout would stifle Republican hopes to erase the lead that Democrats have already established.
A Republican win in this special election would not be a shock, especially as Pilip’s odds are actually slightly better than the ones given to Donald Trump by FiveThirtyEight in 2016. But if she wins, it would be a clear upset, and while it would not be unprecedented, it would also not be an outcome we would feel comfortable forecasting given the data available to us. Our rating for the race is Leans Democratic.
Editor note: a special thanks to Benjamin Rosenblatt for the data used to make the map in this article
I’m a computer scientist who has an interest in machine learning, politics, and electoral data. I’m a cofounder and partner at Split Ticket and make many kinds of election models. I graduated from UC Berkeley and work as a software & AI engineer. You can contact me at lakshya@splitticket.org
I make election maps! If you’re reading a Split Ticket article, then odds are you’ve seen one of them. I’m an engineering student at UCLA and electoral politics are a great way for me to exercise creativity away from schoolwork. I also run and love the outdoors!
You can contact me @politicsmaps on Twitter.
I am an analyst specializing in elections and demography, as well as a student studying political science, sociology, and data science at Vanderbilt University. I use election data to make maps and graphics. In my spare time, you can usually find me somewhere on the Chesapeake Bay. You can find me at @maxtmcc on Twitter.