What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

As you wave at, Jacob, there’s already some chatter that the Republican upset in Texas’s special election runoff tonight might foreshadow large GOP gains in south Texas next year. As Geoffrey and I have written before, Hispanic voters trending further right in metro areas, specifically, could be an obstacle for Democrats — especially if Republicans continue to make inroads with Hispanic voters here and voters along the border, too. As such, it was already in Texas Republicans’ best interest to improve their margins in Hispanic communities in more populous areas (like HD-118) that lean Democratic.

One group we haven’t heard too much about tonight are Latino voters, who shifted toward Trump in 2020. But a special election taking place in Texas tonight might shed some light on whether those shifts have staying power. This is a state House race in a district where 73 percent of residents are Hispanic, and where former Rep. Beto O’Rourke won by 20 points in 2018 and Biden won by 14 points in 2020.

Currently, Ciattarelli leads Murphy 50 percent to 49 percent in New Jersey, with about 80 percent of the vote counted. But it’s really hard to know where this race will end up, and that’s because the county-level results are all over the place. For instance, Murphy currently leads in Hudson County 74 percent to 25 percent, which is actually better than Biden did last year. But he only leads 56 percent to 43 percent in Mercer County — a county Biden carried by 40 points last year. My guess is that these discrepancies are due to different counties reporting different types of votes (in-person vs. absentee), but we don’t have any data on which counties have counted which type, so we’re just left to shrug our shoulders.