What Went Down During The 2021 Elections

Ranked-choice tabulations are complete in Minneapolis, and they’ve confirmed that moderate Jacob Frey will be reelected as mayor, defeating two progressives who had charged that Frey hadn’t done enough to reform the police both before and after last year’s murder of George Floyd. Minneapolis voters also passed City Question 1, which gives the mayor’s office more power, and rejected City Question 2, which would have replaced the police department with a department of public safety. Add it all up, and it appears Minneapolitans have issued a vote of confidence in the status quo despite the past year-plus of turmoil in the city.

If you’re looking for an illustration of how dominant national political trends are these days, even in local elections, look no further than New Jersey’s 3rd Senate District. Republican Edward Durr, a truck driver who claims to have spent only $153 on the primary portion of his campaign, is on the verge of defeating Democratic Senate President Stephen Sweeney, one of the most powerful politicians in the state. How was this possible? Trump won Sweeney’s district by 2 points in 2020, and while Sweeney hasn’t had too much trouble garnering crossover votes here in the past, the current anti-Democratic political environment was likely too much for him to counter.

An addendum to my last post that’s interesting but doesn’t really change the overall takeaway: Dark-blue Essex and Hudson counties are two of the few counties that aren’t exhibiting about a 15-point swing toward Republicans since 2020. That suggests to me that the votes we do have there are Democratic-leaning mail ballots, while the uncounted votes are Republican-leaning Election Day votes. However, these areas are so blue that even Election Day votes should be good for Murphy. Reporting from NBC News’s Steve Kornacki seems to confirm this theory, too.