We have already examined the outlook for 2026 in the aftermath of the 2025 elections. Most of that commentary focused on the U.S. House and how the results from the last disastrous midterm election (2018) might foreshadow the upcoming potentially disastrous midterm election. We spent little time on the Senate, but noted that although 2018 was a train wreck for Republicans over almost the entire ballot, there was one minor exception: Republicans actually gained 2 Senate seats in 2018 and with some luck it could have been as many as 6. Because it was only a net +2, most observers on the right were extremely disappointed. Yet holding onto the Senate at all in 2018 was an important accomplishment and an impressive one under the circumstances. It kept rabid Democrats at least partially at bay. Recall what Democrats did with their total control of the House, and imagine what would have occurred with them in charge of the Senate during the final two years of Trump's first term in the White House.

The 2018 Senate elections provide a history lesson: that it is possible to hold steady (or even improve) at the Senate level even while being decimated up and down the remainder of the election ballot, as happened to the GOP that year.

However the individual Senate skirmishes from 2018 -- unlike the ones from the House -- are not germane as far as predicting what will happen in 2026. All 435 House seats are up for election every two years, which makes recent past midterms at least somewhat comparable to future ones. Many of the House members from 2018 are still in office, even though the configuration of their districts may have changed, and most of those members will be running again next year.

Source: OpenSecrets.org

The current Senate terrain is not as favorable as it was in 2018, when Democrats had to play defense in most of the contested states. In 2026 Republicans have 22 seats to defend (including special elections in Florida and Ohio) while Democrats are up in only 13 states. Of those 13, just 3 present any real opportunity for a GOP gain while there are a minimum of 5 juicy targets for Democrats this time around. All things considered, the playing field is clearly tilted towards the left here.

The top (really the only) probabilities for Republican pickups are in Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire. Democrats have a fighting chance in Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas and perhaps a couple of others, or so they claim.

Any eventual morsel of good news for Republicans, no matter how meager that morsel is ("Generic polls favor Democrats only by 5 points now instead of 6!") will cause hopium addicts on the right to begin fantasizing about Senate pickups in states such as Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia, which they believe are purple but are in fact completely safe for leftists absent some "red" tsunami. In Louisiana, much like in Alaska in 2022, a RINO (Bill Cassidy) currently holds the seat but might be ejected by a true Republican in the primary. That wouldn't count as a pickup, but it would amount to the same thing and would bolster actual conservative representation in the Senate. It didn't happen in Alaska and probably won't in Louisiana either, but there is a chance.


Here are the 2026 Senate battleground states:
(in order of likelihood to flip, as things stand in November of 2025)

North Carolina Senate results from 2020

1. North Carolina:

Anti-Trump squish Thom Tillis announced months ago that he would not seek re-election to the Senate in 2026, beating GOP primary voters to the punch; Tillis decided to quit rather than being dumped in the primary. Not much more about Tillis needs to be written; we already did that here, describing Tillis' career and his increasingly RINO-ish behavior in 2025.

At the time Tillis made his retirement proclamation, Lara Trump was considered to be the best candidate to hold the NC Senate seat for the GOP. She probably still is the best candidate, but won't be running.

Numerous North Carolina congressmen were in position to be the fallback in the event that Trump opted out of the race. In what is likely to be a regrettable move (we'll find out in about a year), Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Michael Whatley entered the NC Senate race shortly after Lara Trump passed. Whatley, despite his general ineffectiveness as head of the RNC, quickly received Donald Trump's imperial blessing, which meant that all other viable candidates might as well step aside.

Maine Senate results from 2020

2. Maine:

The Maine Senate seat is the second most likely one to flip from being occupied by a Republican (such as she is) to one filled by a Democrat. Mega-RINO Susan Collins is currently in her fifth Senate term, and she is looking to make it 6 in 2026. Since Collins' last election in 2020, she has voted more often with Democrats than Republicans; she wasn't exactly a bargain before 2020 either. Collins is normally excused for her behavior because she represents Maine, and the GOP is hardly likely to do any better there.

Maine Republicans have little choice but to pin their hopes on Collins, because nobody who is more conservative would stand a chance in a statewide election, Paul LePage's fluke wins for Governor in 2010 and 2014 notwithstanding; the outcome of his 2022 quest for a non-consecutive third term (he got 42%) is more in line with Maine's preferences these days. It's possible that Collins won't do significantly better than 42% in 2026, but she's been counted out before. Notably in 2020 when Collins squeaked by with 51% against an ultra-liberal Democrat who raised over $75 million for the challenge (Collins barely got to $30 million). Collins received about 57,000 more votes in Maine in 2020 than Donald Trump did.

There will apparently be a two-way battle for the Democrat nomination between current term-limited Governor Janet "Butch" Mills and some guy who wants to be Maine's version of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman (before Fetterman began acting more sensibly and enraged the radical left): that guy would be alleged "working class hero" Graham Platner, who has described himself as a "communist" and "ANTIFA supersoldier" but denies being a "secret Nazi". We believe him. Whoever said it was a secret?

Mills ought to be the favorite in the Rat primary, but if she is it's not by much. One ludicrous poll had her down to Platner by 34 points; that poll must have been taken either on a college campus or in a media newsroom. The geriatric Mills (age 77) started her campaign by refusing to release her medical records, while Platner is suddenly raising millions of dollars from the type of people who think that the 2025 election results are a referendum in favor of killing Republicans. It's going to be quite a battle unless Mills bows out or Platner is dragged down by his past (and present). Democrat voters forgave the murderous racist in Virginia two weeks ago; Maine Democrats aren't likely to abandon any candidate no matter how much of a lunatic he may be -- as long as they think he can win next November.

Keep in mind that Maine uses Rigged Choice Voting (RCV), just like Alaska does. Imagine a 3-way race with Collins, Platner and some other leftist candidate who isn't violently nutzoid. Nobody gets to 50% initially so RCV kicks in and the comparatively moderate independent who finishes third is eliminated. Who gets his votes then?

We might not like the answer.

Georgia Senate results from 2020 runoff

3. Georgia:

The incumbent Democrat, Hollywood Jon Ossoff, will once again be backed by enormous amounts of out-of-state money, just as he was in 2017 (when running for a House seat) and in 2020 when he spent over $150 million to defeat GOP Senator David Perdue. Ossoff lost in November of 2020, but won the January, 2021 runoff which was required because Perdue came up 0.3% short of 50% in the initial election. In the wake of the "questionable" (to put it mildly) presidential election results in 2020, you may recall that some GOP folks in high places were spitefully calling for Republican voters to boycott the January runoff. We've never really been sure what that was meant to accomplish, but you have to admit it worked. Hello, Senator Ossoff.

Ossoff will not have to face a primary opponent in 2026. Democrats nearly always do that -- clearing the field in situations like this, which helps their candidate and frees up Democrat voters to pollute Republican primaries in states (like Georgia) where that is permitted. In the general election Ossoff will take on one of the three current GOP frontrunners: congressman Buddy Carter (85% lifetime conservative rating), congressman Mike Collins (96% conservative) or football coach Derek Dooley; Dooley is running well behind the two congressmen. As of September 30, Ossoff (3% conservative) already had raised over $50 million with much more to come. Georgia deserves better than a couple of liberal stooges in the Senate. Republican-leaning pollsters indicate a close race, but Ossoff maintains a small lead across the board -- so far.

Michigan Senate results from 2020

4. Michigan:

Michigan occasionally votes Republican for President lately (albeit by very small amounts), as it did in 2016 and 2024. It wasn't too long ago (2010 and 2014) that Michigan elected a GOP Governor; OK, Biden-supporter/Trump-hater Rick Snyder was basically a Democrat regardless of the letter after his name, but he did get elected twice as a Republican. Now here's a trivia question: when was the last time Michigan elected a Republican U.S. Senator?

The answer is. . . 1994. The have been 9 Senate elections in Michigan over the subsequent 30+ years, and the GOP is 0-for-9. The most recent two have been close; the other 7 weren't. In 2026 ex-congressman Mike Rogers is going to make a second run at the Senate on the Republican side. We covered Rogers a year ago as he was making his first run, which turned out to be unsuccessful but could hardly have been closer. Rogers lost by less than half a percent in 2024 while running 1.3% behind Donald Trump. Rogers needed to hang onto those coattails a little bit tighter, but apparently he couldn't.

Rogers' Democrat opponent, as in 2024, will be a congresswoman. Last time it was Elissa Slotkin; this time it's Haley Stevens, a far-left Democrat who once worked for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Since 2019 Stevens has represented a deteriorating congressional district in suburban Oakland County, near Detroit. Stevens was first elected in the anti-Trump landslide of 2018, when the 11th district was still politically borderline. After 2020 the district was pushed farther to the left, aided by continuing demographic degradation in Oakland County. The district is now very safe (about D+11) for whatever Democrat runs there.

When Rogers lost in 2024 his Democrat opponent had a massive financial advantage, outspending him $51 million to $13 million. That chapter of the story will be the same in 2026, though as of the end of September Rogers was very close to Stevens in $$$; but the major part of fundraising season is not yet underway. Stevens will also have her hands full before (probably) moving on to face Rogers, because she has two primary opponents who are as well-funded as she is. Democrats were able to bypass a contentious Senate primary in 2024 (Slotkin had only token opposition), but that won't be the case next year. Perhaps some Democrat divisiveness will give Rogers the little extra boost he needs to become Michigan's next Senator. We wouldn't rely on it.

Photo credit: John H. Sununu

Chris and his father are RINOs, if not outright Democrats; John E. Sununu is the conservative in the family. By "Sununu" standards, anyway. He's one of those oxymoronic "fiscal conservatives" now (i.e. anti-conservative on every other issue). There's no such thing as a fiscal conservative/social liberal. Because "social liberalism" is clearly anything but fiscally conservative when you look at how much those social programs cost.

Ohio Senate results from 2024

6. Ohio:

Ohio's 2026 Senate contest is a special election to fill the seat for the remaining two years of J.D. Vance's term. When Vance advanced to the Vice Presidency, Ohio Lt. Governor Jon Husted was promoted to the Senate via an appointment from Governor Mike DeWine. Husted entered politics at an early age (25), losing a bid for state House in 1992. He eventually served in the state House for 4 terms (becoming Speaker in 2005), had one state Senate term, was elected Secretary of State for 8 years beginning in 2011 and was DeWine's Lieutenant from 2019 until joining the U.S. Senate. Husted, now 58, is still quite young by Senate standards. During his short time in D.C., Husted has been a reliable albeit low-profile GOP vote on every issue.

Husted's Democrat opponent next November will be 73-year-old ex-Senator Sherrod Brown, who will be making his third appearance on a ballot in the past 8 years. Brown, a career politician, took a path which was somewhat similar to that of Husted, with Brown initially being elected to the Ohio state House in 1974 at the age of 21. Also like Husted, Brown was Ohio Secretary of State for several years (1983-1992). Brown won an open U.S. House seat in the Cleveland suburbs in 1992, the seat being open because incumbent Democrat Edward Feighan was implicated in the House Bank scandal which enveloped several Democrats that year, and Feighan chose to exit politics as a result.

Brown was a solidly liberal vote (lifetime ACU rating: 6% conservative) but began faking to the center in 2006 in preparation for his first Senate race. Brown defeated incumbent Senator Mike DeWine in that anti-Republican year, immediately resumed his ultra-liberal positions upon taking office in 2007, and was easily re-elected in 2012. Brown's past history of domestic (and other) violence was used against him as Brown was seeking a third Senate term in 2018. However Brown, with the assistance of his allies in the liberal media -- and a massive advantage in fundraising -- was able to shrug that off and score another relatively easy win. Those on the right expected a better outcome since Ohio had suddenly become (or so they thought) a "solid red" state now that it had voted convincingly for Donald Trump in 2016.

Texas Senate results from 2020

7. Texas:

The 2026 Senate race in Texas will feature spirited primaries on both sides, which is not a common thing in recent years. While it's true that Republicans often conduct a no-holds-barred donnybrook on their side (costing a considerable amount in money, and in hard feelings afterwards), Democrats regularly attempt to whittle down the number of candidates in any statewide election, whether for the benefit of a Democrat incumbent -- especially a vulnerable one -- or to anoint a "chosen one" to be their standard-bearer without interference from pesky voters. They even take that approach for presidential elections sometimes. There are several smart reasons why Democrats do this:

1. It avoids a bloody primary fight in which even the winner suffers potentially mortal wounds, and is therefore less effective in the general election because of those wounds.

2. It saves money (not that Democrat campaign funds are ever scarce) which can be used to greater effect in the general election.

3. With diminished reason to vote on the Democrat side in the primary, this tactic frees up Democrat voters to sabotage Republican primaries by participating in those, in order to try to select the weakest possible GOP opponent. Even so-called closed primary states are not immune to this.

Photo credit: splinter.com

Talarico describes himself as a deeply religious Christian, but is a phony who spouts that "Jesus-was-a-liberal" bullshit a la the self-righteous "He Gets Us" television ad campaign, which you may have seen. Picture Talarico as a combination of Bernie Sanders and Jimmy Swaggart (apologies to Swaggart). Talarico the "True Christian" adamantly opposed displaying the Ten Commandments in Texas schools, preferring that those institutions remain atheistic and free from anything which might accidentally encourage good moral values. He represents an ultra-liberal (D+26) Austin district in the state House, so Talarico's views are surely considered to be mainstream by his constituents but most of the rest of the state of Texas would disagree. Talarico is a one-trick pony, wearing his version of far-left Christianity on his sleeve at all times and using it to explain all of his immoral, pro-abortion, pro-crime and other radical votes in the legislature. He surely believes he can "out-liberal" and "out-hate" Crockett and Allred, but he's got his work cut out for him in those departments.

Colin Allred we already know about (click here for more info) from his 2024 Senate attempt. He is a former Dallas-area congressman who was first elected in Congressional District 32 in 2018 when Dallas County swung hard-left in elections that year. The Texas GOP did him a "solid" in 2022 by extending his district up into left-trending Plano (there is an ongoing massive influx of Muslims and Hindus into southern Collin County) and down into ghetto Balch Springs. Previously CD-32 was a D+1 district but became safely D+13 after the new leftist areas were added. Republican redistricters did this favor not so much for Allred but for themselves, sacrificing that district so that adjacent ones like CD-3, CD-5 and CD-24 would be safer for Republicans. When Allred left the House in 2024 to run for the Senate against Ted Cruz, the GOP didn't waste any resources trying to reclaim CD-32. But Allred wasted $94 million in his attempt to acquire a seat in the Senate.

This is nothing new for Ken Paxton. The former state legislator was first elected as Texas Attorney General in 2014, succeeding Greg Abbott in that office as Abbott stepped up to become Governor. The solidly-conservative Paxton quickly showed that he was (and still is) one of the most effective A.G.'s in the entire country. However he is much too effective to suit the RINOs who perpetually have control of the Texas GOP and the Texas state House; Democrats loathe him even more than RINOs do.

The GOP establishment failed to stop Paxton from being elected to a third term in 2022 although they recruited a clueless geriatric congressman (Louie Gohmert) along with Land Commissioner George P. Bush, who is the son of former Florida Governor and momentary (2016) presidential candidate Jeb! Bush. The plan in 2022 was that RINO Bush and Clueless Gohmert and one other hopeless candidate would combine to steal enough primary votes to force Paxton into a runoff where he would either be defeated or severely damaged. The establishment strategy worked, up to a point.

Paxton dominated the runoff against Georgie P. and then won by nearly 10 points in November against the Democrat; all Texas statewide Republican candidates did better than expected in 2022, with Paxton having the closest race of any of them and it still wasn't very close. Maybe it was the "Beto Effect", with Beto the Bozo (D) helpfully running statewide again, and this time being demolished by Abbott, 55%-44%.

Having failed in their 2022 assignment, Texas RINOs led by state House Speaker Dade Phelan and Rep. Andrew Murr impeached Paxton in 2023. Other RINOs joined the Phelan-Murr witch hunt, and Paxton ended up on the wrong end of a 121-23 vote in the House; 60 of those 121 votes for impeachment came from "Republicans". However the Texas state Senate, which is not RINO-controlled, was tasked with completing the impeachment process. During the Senate hearings, one witness who accused Paxton admitted he actually had "no evidence" whatsoever of wrongdoing. Another witness conceded that the claims of malfeasance he made against Paxton were about things he "didn't know whether [they] were true or not", but he regurgitated them anyway. No credible evidence was presented at all. Mere accusations against a Republican are normally sufficient for conviction, but the Senate wasn't buying it this time. In September of 2023 Paxton was acquitted of all charges.

With his enemies living in mortal terror of Paxton becoming a U.S. Senator, the smear campaign against him has ramped up again in 2025 since he announced his run against Cornyn in April. The smear campaign seems to be having an effect, judging from the polls. Paxton has only a slight lead over the unpopular GOP incumbent, Cornyn, and is only neck-and-neck with Allred in hypothetical general election polls. Our opinion is that Paxton is so good at what he is currently doing (you can tell by the amount of hate he receives), that we'd be much better off with him in a fourth term as Texas Attorney General rather than a first term as a U.S. Senator.

Photo credit: Texas Scorecard

As noted above, the GOP primary is not just a 2-way race anymore. In October, congressman Wesley Hunt announced that he would abandon his safe (R+10) district in the suburban Houston area and join the Senate race. The 44-year-old Hunt has a fine military background, graduating from West Point in 2004, serving 8 years in the U.S. Army before earning 3 Masters' Degrees, and then entering politics. Hunt's first bid for Congress came in 2020 in the deteriorating 7th District and was unsuccessful though he made a solid showing (47.5%) under difficult circumstances. When the new 38th District was created in 2022 in approximately the same area, Hunt won a majority in a crowded 10-way Republican primary and then easily sealed the deal in November. Hunt was re-elected in 2024 with only token opposition, and has been a reliable conservative vote in the House. He currently trails his primary opponents in fundraising (and is way behind the wealthy Democrats) but he's only been in the race for about 6 weeks.

Although Texas remains a relentlessly "purpling" state due to demographic changes caused by invaders both domestic and foreign, most forecasters agree that -- as things stand now -- Republicans should be able to hold this Senate seat in 2026. We concur, although the GOP winning percentages are more likely to be in the same range as they were in Texas from 2016-2020 (~50-55%) than their slightly higher levels (sometimes 55-60%) from 2022-2024.

Iowa Senate results from 2020

8. Iowa:

Moderate GOP incumbent Joni Ernst is calling it quits in the Hawkeye State after two Senate terms during which she moved gradually but perceptibly to the left. President Trump attempted to prevail upon Ernst to run one more time, but she declined and decided to proceed with her retirement (shades of 2018, egad!). Ernst, who is probably the only pig castrator currently serving in Congress, has been described as a "fiscal conservative". That's far more letters than are necessary to spell "RINO".

The supposed Democrat heavyweight in Iowa -- i.e. a Democrat who can actually get elected -- is state auditor Rob Sand. But he's running for Governor in 2026, not for the Senate, and he's not some electoral wizard anyway. Sand won in the hyper-Democrat year of 2018 with 51% of the vote and held on by his fingernails (50.1%) in 2022 after outspending his Republican opponent by a mere 40:1 ratio.

Ernst's withdrawal is a golden opportunity for the GOP to find a true conservative as a replacement. Or at least it would be, if they cared to try. Instead, squishy congresswoman Ashley Hinson is the clear favorite among Republicans. Not only would the Senate be an obvious step up for Hinson, but she may be figuring that getting elected statewide in Iowa could be less difficult than being re-elected in her marginal congressional district. There's a possibility that Hinson will have primary opposition from Iowa state House Speaker Pat Grassley. That last name may sound familiar. Patrick may choose to try to join his 92-year-old father in the Senate, but for now he is not running. Several low-level Democrat candidates are amassing funds to take on Hinson, and although they may be low-profile their campaign accounts are growing daily. This race is not likely to be the slam-dunk that some might anticipate, but Hinson is favored at this time.

Tags:

2026 Senate North Carolina Maine Georgia Michigan New Hampshire Ohio Texas Iowa

The election results from November 4, 2025 bear a striking resemblance to those from November 7th of 2017. In the aftermath of the 2025 Democrat sweeps in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City -- and elsewhere -- most right-wing analysts are trying to appear calm as they whistle past the graveyard in their attempts to dismiss the disaster as "completely expected", "limited to 'blue' states", "unimportant" and, most of all, "meaningless as far as next year's midterms are concerned".

If that's what most analysts are claiming, then most analysts are wrong.

The polls sure were wrong -- but not the way we wanted them to be.

"Completely expected":

An election day puff piece about new RNC Chairman Joe Gruters claimed there were going to be "close contests for Governor in New Jersey and Virginia" and Gruters trumpeted GOTV efforts by Republicans in those states. Of course the races turned out to be not so close except in some pre-election outlier polls like this one, and the GOTV effort was apparently quite insufficient. The margin of defeat was so great that even the usual "Frodd! Frodd! Frodd!" claims aren't being made, except by those for whom facing reality isn't exactly a strong point. This isn't 2020.

Numerous prognosticators understood that the GOP candidates were likely to lose this year in VA and NJ, but who the hell had 13 points as the margin of defeat in New Jersey? We sure didn't. One ridiculously biased Rutgers poll back in June had Ciattarelli losing by 21 points, however polls which showed him neck-and-neck with the Democrat Top Gun were also way off the mark. Most New Jersey pollsters had forecast a race that would wind up within, or close to, the margin of polling error.

In Virginia, only hardcore GOP surveyors such as Trafalgar ever had Winsome Sears coming within spitting distance of the Governor's mansion in Virginia, and as election day loomed, even they bailed on her chances. Trafalgar still had the Virginia Lt. Governor race being close (it wasn't), and had Jason Miyares being narrowly re-elected (he wasn't) as Attorney General against savage Democrat Jay Jones.

Possibly thinking: "Wow, the voters agreed with me! Republicans (and their children) DO deserve to die!"

Regarding the Republicans' gubernatorial defeats: it's one thing to be expected to lose, it's another thing to be completely obliterated and to have the calamity permeate the entire election ballot to the point where Republicans also hemorrhaged seats in the Virginia House of Delegates and the state Assembly in New Jersey.

Given the Democrat gerrymander of the state House maps in Virginia, we mentioned that Republicans had done well to keep the partisan balance close in prior elections. It ain't close no more. Democrats picked up 13 seats.

In New Jersey the GOP, which came into November with only 28 out of 80 Assembly seats, has lost at least 3 more and 4 races (all seats held by Republicans) are still uncalled so there is the potential to wind up at minus-7 though a more likely end result is minus-5 (23 R, 85 D). The degree of Democrat gerrymandering in New Jersey state-level districts points to 23-25 R seats as an approximate expectation, which means -- like in Virginia -- Republicans had actually been slightly overachieving before 2025.


"Limited to 'blue' states":

Pennsylvania is a state Trump won twice, and there has been considerable publicity over Republican voter registrations growing while Democrats lag. Twelve short months ago Pennsylvania also ousted a well-entrenched liberal Democrat from the Senate, and somewhat thwarted the PA Democrat gerrymander of U.S. House seats by finally winning a couple of closely-balanced districts in the eastern part of the state after failing to do so in three previous attempts. The Keystone State is supposed to be "purple" now, not blue.

Last week there were crucial elections regarding three geriatric ultra-liberal justices on the PA Supreme Court. These three, and their liberal colleagues, are wholly responsible for (among other atrocities) the hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymanders which exist at all levels in Pennsylvania. These gerrymanders were dictated by the court, which:

1. In 2018 overthrew the legitimate congressional district map which had been created by the GOP state legislature in 2011.

2. Replaced that map with a Democrat gerrymander which was put into effect for the 2018 midterms. It cost Republicans 4 House seats and almost became 6.

3. Overruled the GOP legislature and sided with Democrats again in 2022. First, they used the Democrat-gerrymandered 2018 map as a basis for the new districts, and then revised that map to take away one more seat from Republicans. Secondly, they overruled the legislature's state-level district maps and replaced them with Democrat gerrymanders which cost the Republicans 13 seats in the state House when that map was first used in 2022 -- 13 being exactly the number of flipped seats which was required to give Democrats control.

In 2025, Democrats cemented their control of the PA Supreme Court for years to come.

Pennsylvania voters had the opportunity to send those judges packing. Instead, all three judges who were up for retention were overwhelmingly returned (by nearly 25-point margins) to the court for another 10-year term. The PA Democrat Supreme Court thus maintains its 5-2 majority, and one of the two Republicans on the court barely qualifies as such; there is only one true Republican out of seven judges on the PA Court.

In Georgia, which like PA is hardly a solid "blue" state (yet), Democrats scored shocking upsets in two statewide races for the unimportant-sounding office of Public Service Commissioner. Republican incumbents in Districts 2 and 3 were up for re-election, and both got stomped by 25 points with over 1.5 million votes cast in each race.

Pundits on the right have told us in the past that special election losses in tiny state House districts in which not even 3,000 votes were cast were actually of vital importance as far as the GOP "learning lessons" from the defeat. Would they now say we should ignore or deliberately misinterpret election outcomes (not just the ones from Georgia and Pennsylvania) in which millions of votes were cast?

• Dems' Election Day Sweep Is Not A Harbinger (The Federalist)

• Economic Issues Emerge As Most Important For Voters (Breitbart) "It's the economy, stupid". So that's what caused all this. Sure.

• The GOP Loss Is Not A Big Deal (American Spectator)

• Alternatively, there's this: Republicans Have Good Reason To Worry (Trump-haters at National Review blame everything on. . . guess who?)

• NJ Governor: D+14.1%, 2.15 million total votes
• NJ Senate: D+1 seat
• NJ Assembly: D+2 seats

• VA Governor: D+8.9%, 2.61 million total votes
• VA Lt. Governor: D+5.5%
• VA Attorney General: D+6.7%
• VA Senate: no scheduled elections in 2017
• VA House of Delegates: D+15 seats

Happier days: 2021 gubernatorial election results in Virginia

2021:

• NJ Governor: D+3.2%, 2.61 million total votes
• NJ Senate: R+1
• NJ House: R+6, resulting in more seats for the GOP in the NJ Assembly than anytime since 2003

• VA Governor: R+2.0%, 3.29 million total votes
• VA Lt. Governor: R+1.5%
• VA Attorney General: R+0.8%
• VA Senate: no change
• VA House of Delegates: R+7 seats, retaking control

• NJ Governor: D+14.1%, 3.23 million total votes so far
• NJ Senate: no scheduled elections in 2025
• NJ Assembly: D+3 seats at least, giving Democrats their highest total since 1973

• VA Governor: D+14.8%, 3.38 million total votes so far
• VA Lt. Governor: D+11.1%
• VA Attorney General: D+6.2%
• VA Senate: no scheduled elections in 2025
• VA House of Delegates: D+13 seats (all of them tossup districts, only 1 of which was an open seat)

Artist's conception of the GOP's 2018 election results

Back to 2018:

A preview of the upcoming Republican disaster came one month before 2018 got underway, when Judge Roy Moore lost the special U.S. Senate election in deep "red" Alabama. Senator Jeff Sessions had resigned the seat early in 2017 to become Trump's first Attorney General, and Luther Strange was appointed as Sessions' replacement. An acrimonious 3-way Republican primary occurred, in which congressman Mo Brooks was relegated to third place due to demonstrating insufficient fealty to President Trump. Moore and Strange slugged it out in the runoff with Moore advancing to face unknown liberal Democrat trial lawyer Doug Jones.

Moore, a controversial figure to begin with due to his conservative views, was falsely accused of sexual indiscretions during the 2017 campaign. Five years later, well after it mattered electorally, Moore won his defamation lawsuit against a Democrat PAC. Five days before the December, 2017 election the Democrats ousted their own sexual predator, Al Franken, from the Senate (knowing he would be replaced by another Democrat, without an election being held) in order to try to obtain "credibility" for their attacks on Judge Moore. Mo(o)re importantly, they outspent the GOP nominee in Alabama by a factor of over 4:1. Jones won by 1.7% and was a reliably liberal senator for three years before his inevitable defeat in 2020 by Republican Tommy Tuberville in a 60%-40% landslide as Alabama returned to normal.

Senate results from 2018

The House went up in flames but Election Night 2018 was a good one for Republicans in the Senate. Good, but not great. The 2017 GOP defeat in Alabama had left the Republicans with a narrow 51-49 majority. In 2018 they picked up 4 Senate seats (FL, IN, MO, ND) but also lost a pair of seats which they had previously held (AZ, NV) for a net +2. For a little while there also seemed a possibility of the GOP losing Thad Cochran's seat in Mississippi.

The two defeats combined with their fumble of two other anticipated pickups (MT, WV) to render the overall Senate outcome as a significant disappointment for Republicans. There were unrealistic prospects of seizing other Senate seats (MI, OH) as well, leading some dreamers to anticipate up to an 8-seat gain. Viewed in that light, +2 tasted rather bitter indeed and Democrats were relieved that it hadn't been worse.

Somewhat lost in the mourning over the House catastrophe and the missed Senate opportunities were major Republican losses at the state level in 2018. Not only did the GOP suffer a loss of 7 governorships (IL, KS, ME, MI, NM, NV, WI) but they were decimated in state legislatures as well. Republicans went a net minus-66 in state Senate seats that year (losing control in CO, ME, NH & WA), and minus-251 in state Houses (losing control in MN and NH).

If 2026 turns out to be a 2018-type bloodbath, don't discount the impact further down the ballot.

• 27 favored Democrats, 10 were rated as completely even, and 43 were Republican-leaning

• 23 districts had a Democrat incumbent who ran again and won
• 16 districts had a Republican incumbent who ran again and won

• 5 districts had a Democrat incumbent who did not run again -- Rats held all 5
• 10 open Republican seats were won by Democrats

• 1 Republican was able to hold an open GOP seat (Paul Ryan's old district, WI-1)
• 2 Republicans won open Democrat seats, both of which were in Minnesota
• 23 Republican incumbents were defeated

The likely effects of the ongoing redistricting currently are:

• California: + 4 safe Democrat seats, and there is only 1 marginal seat (Democrat-leaning, that's how they figure +5 in all) in the entire state; it's now held by a Republican. This leaves 47 (!) almost perfectly-safe Democrat seats here, barring any miracles. This is an incredible accomplishment -- screwing Republicans massively while at the same time shoring up every single Rat incumbent who might have been even remotely endangered (e.g. Josh Harder, Adam Gray, Jim Costa, George Whitesides, Derek Tran, Dave Min). All six Democrats on that list are breathing much easier as of last Tuesday.

• Missouri: +1 safe GOP seat, 1 currently marginal GOP seat becomes slightly safer and just barely exits tossup range.

• North Carolina: Nothing much happened here despite all the wailing from Democrats and high-fiving from Republicans. One marginal Rat-leaning seat becomes a marginal Republican-leaning seat -- but numerous GOP seats in North Carolina (practically every single one of them) are marginal too or very close to that threshold, so if there is ever a "blue wave". . . look out.

• Ohio: No substantial changes to any district, much to the disappointment of Republicans. GOP cowards (fearing some black-robed tyrant, perhaps?) created a new map which doesn't ensure their party any gains at all. They can still pick up 2 or 3 seats anyway, but they could have done that even in 2022 or 2024. The seats were there for the taking, but Republicans blew it both times in CD-1, CD-9 and CD-13.

• Texas: +1 safe Republican seat (yes, only 1), but 4 current Democrat seats are turned into Republican-leaning tossups which the GOP is counting on winning. Assuming no liberal judges say otherwise.

• Alabama: 2 seats (Republicans should be able to get one back)
• Florida: 4 seats
• Georgia: 5 seats
• Louisiana: 2 seats (one of which is the subject of this court case)
• Mississippi: 1 seat
• Missouri: 2 seats (the GOP will gain one with their new map)
• North Carolina: 2 more seats (after taking NC-1 with the new map)
• South Carolina: 1 seat

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2025 2026 (uh oh) Virginia New Jersey And just about everywhere else

Although the elections may be tantalizingly close (in truth, they probably won't be that close), the likeliest outcome for the Republicans is. . .

The races have generally (but not consistently) been tightening in both states, especially according to polling organizations which are classified as Republican-leaning by liberal media sources. Some hardcore leftists (e.g. Washington Post) are cheerleading for a Democrat blowout in Virginia, but the ones who attempt to be less transparently liberal forecast the contests as being moderately competitive. Close though the races may be, as things stand now both Jack Ciattarelli (NJ) and Winsome Earle-Sears (VA) appear to be heading for losses. It's up to the good voters of New Jersey and Virginia to get out and vote and prove the pollsters wrong.

We'll start with a look at New Jersey.

Photo credit: inquirer.com

Background:

In 2025 Ciattarelli is making his third attempt for Governor of New Jersey. The three-term state legislator ran in 2017 and finished second in the Republican primary to Kim Guadagno, the two-term (2010-2017) Lt. Gov. under Governor Tubba Goo.

In 2021 Ciatterelli came closer than expected to an upset victory after starting 15 to 20 points down in early general election polls. Even polls taken in late October (by Democrat-college groups such as Emerson, Rutgers, Farleigh Dickinson & Monmouth) anticipated incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy being victorious by 6 to 10 points. Only the Trafalgar Group (R) came close to getting it right, predicting a 4-point loss for the challenger; Ciattarelli lost by 84,000 votes (3.2%).

Murphy was first elected in 2017 by vastly outspending Republican nominee Guadagno, as well as by capitalizing on the massive unpopularity of outgoing Republican Governor Chris Christie, to whom Guadagno was constantly linked. That election result maintained New Jersey's habit of alternating parties every 8 years in gubernatorial elections, a pattern which has held since 1993 when ultra-liberal Republican Christine Todd Whitman denied Democrat Jim "Flimflam" Florio a second term by eking out a surprising 1-point victory. Florio later claimed that he was "one of the first victims of modern right-wing talk radio", LOL. Democrats appear likely to break that alternating pattern in 2025.

Photo credit: app.com

The 2021 election was mainly a referendum on Murphy's first term, with Ciatterelli being regarded as sufficiently bland and moderate to avoid alienating potential crossover Democrat voters which any Jersey Republican requires in order to have a chance of winning a statewide election. Murphy is a huge supporter of the illegal importation of new Democrat voters from foreign countries, and he designated New Jersey as a sanctuary state. He also took several steps to hinder the deportation of illegals, such as not permitting law enforcement to ask about immigration status. By 2021 many New Jersey voters had grown weary of the invasion and their disaffection hurt Murphy's re-election chances. Nor were the voters pleased with the numerous tax increases which were passed by the overwhelmingly Democrat NJ legislature.

Unlike 2017, Republicans were able to compete on almost equal financial footing in 2021 in the expensive gubernatorial election. The same applies in 2025, though as we head into the final days of the race the Democrat has substantially more cash on hand, and therefore will likely be more visible in the media than Ciatterelli (nevermind the media bias advantage the Democrat already holds for free).

Ciattarelli won 6 of New Jersey's 12 congressional districts in 2021 -- including the one represented by 2025 Democrat nominee Mikie Sherrill. Sherrill is currently in her fourth term in the House, and is a member in good standing of the far-left wing of her party. She was first elected in the anti-Trump year of 2018 in what at the time was a tossup district (NJ-11) centered on upscale, suburban Morris County.

Until 2018 Morris County had been forever represented in Congress by liberal Republicans such as Rodney Frelinghuysen. Like several other squishy Republicans in the House, the staunchly anti-Trump Frelinghuysen picked 2018 to retire. The 72-year-old, 12-term representative was not comfortable being "forced" to toe the party line and support a president whom he despised. Frelinghuysen abandoned his House seat, hoping (or knowing) that he would be replaced by a Democrat who would help the new Democrat majority thwart Trump's legislative agenda and begin Trump's congressional persecution. Sherrill filled that role nicely.

Morris County seems to have recently begun a journey away from the left and back towards the center, voting for Trump in 2024 after giving Joe Biden a 4.2% victory in 2020. Morris is reliably Republican in other statewide elections too (Murphy lost there twice and it wasn't particularly close), even selecting hapless Curtis Bashaw over Andy Kim in the 2024 Senate race. In 2022 Democrat gerrymanderers added a larger portion of ghetto Essex County to the Eleventh District, taking it from being a complete tossup to favoring Democrats by 5 points. Republicans face an uphill battle to win NJ-11 in 2026 from either Sherrill or whoever her special-election replacement is if Sherrill becomes Governor as expected.

2024 presidential election results in New Jersey

Geography:

We have divided New Jersey into the six geographical regions listed below, shown with the counties which correspond to those regions:

• South Jersey: Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem
• Central Jersey: Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset
• West Jersey: Hunterdon, Morris, Sussex, Warren
• Central Coast: Monmouth, Ocean
• Urbanized North: Bergen, Passaic
• Ghetto Jersey: Essex, Hudson, Union

Photo credit: redlineheadlines.com

Scott Presler and his organization have worked diligently over the past couple of years to increase Republican voter registration counts in certain states. Presler focused on Pennsylvania during 2024 and has been given inordinate credit for the GOP victories which occurred there -- Trump's win along with that of Senator Dave McCormick, and the important pickup of two House seats (CD-7 and CD-8) in Eastern PA.

While it is true that the Democrat registration advantage in PA was reduced to 3.1% from 5.6% during 2024 (a net GOP gain of 165,000 registrations in 12 months), the trend in PA has been significantly in the R direction for over 15 years now. Between November of 2008 and November of 2023 the GOP added 210,616 voters in the Keystone State while Democrats diminished by 579,285, a net change of 789,901 in the positive direction for Republicans.

Pennsylvania has apparently "cleaned up" its voter rolls in 2025, with both parties seeing a reduction in registrations:

2024:

• 3,710,290 R (40.5%)
• 3,991,381 D (43.6%)
• 1,460,307 I (15.9%)

• 3,642,630 R (40.9%)
• 3,811,262 D (42.8%)
• 1,448,470 I (16.3%)

2024 PA voter registration, by county

After 2024, Presler and his vote registrars moved east to New Jersey in an attempt to turn that state "red". As in PA, trends in New Jersey were already favoring Republicans, although these trends have not manifested themselves in any victories. Trump's loss by 5.9% here in 2024 was actually the best showing for a Republican candidate since George Bush lost by only 2.4% in the 3-way election of 1992. Prior to 1992, the GOP won 6 presidential elections in a row in New Jersey before the state's demographics began to head rapidly south.

Recent results have been no better down the ballot, with Chris Christie the only Republican to win statewide since Christie Whitman in 1997; the GOP has not elected a U.S. senator from the Garden State since ultra-liberal Clifford Case in 1972, and the U.S. House districts have been gerrymandered to an amount which limits Republicans to just 3 districts out of 12 (and at least one of those GOP districts, CD-7, is very marginal). Those factors notwithstanding, Trump did a little better statewide than expected in 2024, Jack Ciattarelli almost pulled off a major upset in the most recent gubernatorial election, and there appears to be reason for some optimism on the Republican side going forward.

The trend is also apparent in the New Jersey voter registration figures, to a minor degree.

November 2023:

• R: 1,541,158 (23.7%)
• D: 2,504,294 (38.6%)

• R: 1,628,633 (24.2%)
• D: 2,534,932 (37.7%)

• R: 1,670,297 (25.3%)
• D: 2,525,346 (38.2%)

2024 presidential election result in Virginia

Background:

Although Trump lost the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2024, his margin of defeat (5.7%) was a distinct improvement over 2020 when he lost by over 10 percent; the 2024 outcome was in line with other recent presidential elections in Virginia. There was false optimism in the 2024 U.S. Senate race, where many wishful thinkers believed that Hung Cao would defy the polls and score a major upset over incumbent radical leftist Timmy Kaine, or at least make it a close call. Cao did neither of those things, losing by 9 points which was just a slight tick better than the polls predicted.

Trump's sizable step in the right direction, along with the surprise victory by Republican Glenn Youngkin for Governor in 2021, helps to create the illusion that Virginia is a "purple" state where Republicans have almost as good a chance at winning as Democrats do. In reality, Virginia is slipping behind the rest of the country and becoming "bluer" by the day. Relative to the nationwide percentage of the Republican presidential vote, Trump's 4-point underachievement in VA in 2024 was the worst showing here for a GOP candidate since the 1940's when Virginia was solidly Democrat across the entire ticket. Although Virginia does not register voters by party, recent estimates of party affiliation indicate that Democrats have nearly a 2:1 advantage over Republicans. That's not very purple-ish.

Speaking of Governor Youngkin, his win in 2021 was primarily the result of the stars and planets aligning in his favor, and it is now abundantly clear that Youngkin's electoral success (and that of his party, which gained 7 seats and took control of the state House that year) was a temporary phenomenon.

Youngkin benefited from several factors, which have some parallel to Donald Trump's surprise victory in 2016, and those factors may have also helped Republicans in races down the ballot in Virginia in 2021:

Photo credit: washingtonmonthly.com

• Youngkin, like Trump in '16, was a political outsider and not a career politician, and both were fortunate to be able to run against the single most repugnant and unlikeable Democrat available at the time (Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton). Former Governor and Clinton crony McAuliffe was a godsend for Youngkin. McAuliffe's abrasive personality and his far-left political positions proved to be quite helpful to the moderate Republican candidate. Furthermore, the Republican was able to compete financially against the Democrat's massive fundraising advantages by contributing significantly to his own campaign. Youngkin distanced himself from Trump (while McAuliffe was not able to distance himself from Joe Biden) enough to keep moderate and independent voters from bolting to the left.
  
  The 2021 Republican nominee was aided in great measure by voter revulsion against local school boards (notably in Loudoun County) which were defying parents -- and common sense -- by welcoming the presence of boys in girls' bathrooms and by continually "overstepping parental rights during the pandemic". When a male student raped a female student in a Loudoun County school bathroom in 2021, the incident and the school's mishandling of it rightfully became a national scandal -- at least in the "right wing" media. The liberal media downplayed and/or ignored the story after an initial cursory report, with a majority of voters in upscale, liberal Loudoun County probably being totally unaware of what had occurred right in their own backyard. But many good voters in the rest of the state were aware of this atrocity, and their logical reaction to it helped Youngkin considerably.
  
  
  
• Virginia is not exactly known for the cleanliness of its elections in recent years, but Youngkin was perhaps not taken as seriously by Democrats as he should have been even though he was close or even slightly led McAuliffe in polls which were taken in the closing weeks of the race. Trump also was not given a serious chance to win in 2016, and liberal pollsters right up to election day helped the Democrats maintain their (false) overconfidence; Democrats and Deep Staters of both parties did prepare for the eventuality of Trump's election by fabricating the "Steele Dossier" and all the phony "Russia, Russia, Russia" crap to attempt to hamstring him after the fact, but they apparently didn't put as much -- let's call it "extra effort" -- as usual into achieving their desired electoral outcome in the first place.
  
  Underestimating the amount of voter support which both Trump and Youngkin actually had, the Democrats apparently did not feel the need to ensure victories by their usual methods (cough, cough). Trump was able to achieve narrow victories in critical states such as Pennsylvania (by 0.7%), Michigan (0.2%), Wisconsin (0.7%) and Florida (1.2%) and thus win the electoral vote despite losing the popular vote by 2.1%. Youngkin improved his party's showing from 2017 in several areas of the state, winning major portions of the Tidewater and Greater Richmond areas, and vastly reducing the deficit in NOVA -- even in Loudoun County, but still lost by 11 points there.
  
  In the aftermath of that glorious 2021 outcome it was reported that one of the main reasons for it was the "Virginia Project", a Republican effort to increase election integrity (something Democrats always oppose) by, for one thing, recruiting poll watchers for as many precincts as possible. With 36% of the votes in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election being cast early or absentee, the impact of GOP poll watchers was somewhat muted unless they were present when the envelopes were being opened and the ballots counted; their presence on election day was still helpful, though.
  
  With it seeming to work so well in Virginia that year, the Virginia Project (we were told) would serve as a model for helping ensure the honesty of future elections, and would be expanded to states beyond Virginia. Looking at many important outcomes from 2022 onward, the proponents of the Virginia Project either never implemented their model or it didn't function as well as expected. In any event, there's much more to the concept of election integrity than poll watchers can accomplish.
  
  
  
• Even with all of those advantages, both Trump and Youngkin won rather unconvincingly. The mistakes which national Democrats made in 2016 at the presidential level were "rectified" in 2020; the mistakes which Virginia Democrats made in 2021 began to be rectified almost immediately: the 7-seat gain which gave Republicans the Virginia state House starting in 2022 was partially offset in November of 2023 when Democrats added 3 seats and seized control of the House, 51-49; they have held the state Senate throughout Youngkin's term, by a 21-19 margin.

Photo credit: lifenews.com

GOP nominee Winsome Earle-Sears is an immigrant from Jamaica who arrived in the U.S. at the age of 6. She served in the United States Marine Corps for 4 years in the 1980's and became an American citizen during that time. Her political career commenced in the early 2000's when she won a race for the state House, upsetting a black Democrat who had been in office for two decades. She was the first Republican to win a state House seat in a majority-black district in Virginia since 1865. She later became the state's first female Lieutenant Governor (elected in 2021) and is the first black female to be elected to any statewide office in Virginia.

Although Sears endorsed Donald Trump in 2020 and served as the chairman of a PAC called "Black Americans to Re-elect the President", she broke with Trump in 2022 because she believed that the candidates Trump had endorsed that year were too conservative and therefore unelectable (in fact they weren't elected, but Sears was wrong about the reason for their defeats). At that time Sears declared she would not support Donald Trump's election bid if he were to run in 2024.

Probably for this reason (yeah, "probably"), Trump for a long time refused to support Sears for Governor in 2025, though he belatedly came through with an endorsement earlier this week. That endorsement, however, seemed to focus more on Spanberger being a "disaster" for Virginia than it did on Sears being Trump's choice for the job.

Sears also has the endorsements of Governor Youngkin, state Attorney General Jason Miyares, the entire Virginia Republican congressional delegation, and some congressmen from other states. Sears is pro-life, supports "common sense" tax cuts and government spending cuts, and opposes Democrats' radical pro-crime policies such as "catch and release" and sanctuary cities. She opposes incompetent (but powerfully unionized) teachers and favors school choice and parents' rights. Sears also strongly supports Virginia's "right-to-work" law. These positions stand in stark contrast to that of her allegedly "moderate" Democrat opponent, Abigail Spanberger.

Photo credit: twitchy.com

Spanberger, a native of New Jersey, went from being a substitute schoolteacher and a postal inspector to (as of 2006) being a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency; a rather interesting career change, to say the least. When she first entered politics, Spanberger's CIA resume was sanitized so that it could be declassified and, according to ABC News, the former spook stuck "to carefully scripted lines, approved by the agency, when talking about her work" on the campaign trail.

In 2018 CIAbby was recruited to run against Republican incumbent Dave Brat for a seat in Congress. Brat had irritated many GOP bigwigs by daring to oppose -- and defeat -- golden boy Eric Cantor, a squish who was a member of the GOP leadership (House Majority Leader) when he was shocked by Brat in the 2014 primary. We wrote at length about Brat's situation here, and his parallels to ex-congressman Bob Good. Good, a very solid conservative like Brat, fell out of favor with his party's leadership in 2024, and irritated the biggest bigwig of them all (Donald Trump). Good was defeated in the 2024 primary.

VA-7, the formerly Republican-oriented district in which Brat toppled Cantor and then 4 years later was defeated by Spanberger, was altered to give Democrats a much greater chance of success after 2014. Brat survived in 2016 because the Democrats pretty much gave him a free pass, but in 2018 Spanberger was able to raise and spend over $7 million dollars to purchase that House seat. That was more than double the amount which Brat could raise (or obtain from his indifferent party leadership). The surplus millions which Deep State Abby was able to throw around proved to be critical as she eked out a 1.9% win in the recently-gerrymandered district; her margin of victory came almost exclusively from the new Democrat areas in the Richmond suburbs which were added after 2014.

Democrats spent lavishly while procuring numerous House seats in 2018 and, coincidentally, another new Democrat who was the recipient of an astronomical "investment" that year was New Jersey's Mikie Sherrill who is now her party's gubernatorial nominee in that state.

Photo credit: NRCC

Republicans picked up 13 House seats in 2020 but Spanberger's wasn't one of them although a serious effort was made. Her district, which had been rated as R+10 prior to the 2016 Democrat gerrymander, was still slightly "red" and Republicans had it high on their list of potential pickups. Spanberger, then as now, occasionally talks like a moderate and did cast a highly publicized (and highly choreographed) vote against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker in January, 2019. Spanberger then spent the remainder of her first term in Congress establishing her liberal bona fides, but was able to conceal that fact from the voters as she reverted back to her faux-moderate persona.

Nick Freitas, a solid conservative, defeated squishy John McGuire (now a congressman from Virginia's Fifth District) in a contentious Republican party primary convention in July of 2020, and won the right to oppose Spanberger in November. As in 2018, the Republican carried all areas of the district aside from the deteriorating Richmond suburbs, but that was not sufficient to prevail district-wide. Or was it?

On the afternoon of the Wednesday following the 2020 election, Freitas had a lead of a little more than 1,300 votes over Spanberger. Then came the discovery of a "flash drive" in Henrico County by the husband of a Democrat operative, and that flash drive miraculously contained over 14,000 as yet uncounted votes in the 7th District. Just as miraculously, Spanberger happened to receive a tremendous percentage (64%) of those flash votes. The Democrats later found even more votes for CIAbby, making sure that her final margin was outside the range which would require an automatic recount. In 2022, Spanberger spent over $9 million dollars to successfully retain the 7th District seat; redistricting by that time had moved the district even further left in order to help ensure her another term. Spanberger did not seek re-election in 2024 in order to focus on her gubernatorial run.

Geography:

As we did with New Jersey, we have split Virginia into 6 regions:

• Rural Chesapeake Bay area
• Greater Richmond
• Hampton Roads
• Northern Virginia
• Piedmont / Southside
• Shenandoah Valley / Southwest Virginia

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2025 Governor New Jersey Virginia

In Virginia the results were literally "not Good", as staunch conservative Bob Good (100% lifetime ACU rating through 2023) was narrowly defeated in the CD-5 GOP primary by state Sen. John McGuire, who also purports to be a conservative. Bob Good (not to be confused with former congressman and presidential candidate Virgil Goode, who represented this same district from 1997-2008) was first elected in 2020 when he beat incumbent moderate Denver Riggleman -- who later bolted from the GOP -- at the party convention and then prevailed over black liberal Democrat Cameron Webb in the general. The national Democrat party saw to it that Webb had nearly $6 million to spend (vs. Good's barely $1 million) and dumped even more into the pot via an additional $4.6 million in "independent" expenditures against the Republican. Good fit the district reasonably well and had no trouble being re-elected in 2022.

Good is a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and was supported in his contentious 2024 primary by all the right people, including Matt Gaetz, Steve Bannon and Byron Donalds. Good has never been popular with the liberal establishment wing of the GOP however, and they had the knives out for him in much the same way as they treated another 100% conservative in Virginia -- Dave Brat -- back in 2018 (see below).

Photo credit: Evan Vucci/AP

Walking hand-in-hand with liberal GOPeers such as Kevin McCarthy this time around was a guy by the name of Donald Trump, who declared war on Bob Good because the 100% conservative congressman had violated Trump's First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me". Good, you see, endorsed Ron DeSantis for president over a year ago but then switched back to Trump and even went so far as to show up in person in New York City to support Trump during the former president's political persecution trial in Juan Merchan's Kangaroo courtroom.

Lord Trump was not forgiving, however, and He smote Good while waving off the Virginian's support as coming "too late".

Photo credit: Steve Helber/AP

The backstabbing of Good was reminiscent of prior events in the Old Dominion, such as when conservative Dave Brat was abandoned by the GOPe and hung out to dry, allowing him to be outspent heavily and defeated by Abby "Deep State" Spanbarger in congressional district 7 in the anti-Trump wave election of 2018.

Brat was first elected in 2014 in a shocking primary win over Eric Cantor, a one-time conservative who became a squish after he was elevated into the GOP leadership. Cantor was the House Majority Leader when Brat stunned him and the establishment in the '14 primary. Cantor spent nearly $8 million in that primary while Brat, relying on conservative grassroots support instead of GOP party and PAC funding, raised and spent only a tiny fraction of Cantor's amount. Brat won the general election by over 20 points and was re-elected in 2016 as well. In those two terms he took the conservative position on every single key vote.

The establishment never forgave him for taking out their Golden Boy.

In 2015, partisan Democrat judges threw out the district map which had been used in Virginia since 2011 and mandated an immediate partisan Democrat gerrymander which altered several districts in the southeastern part of the state. Brat's district, based mainly in the Richmond suburbs, was one of those affected.

VA-4 results in 2014


VA-4 results in 2016

The goal of the gerrymander was to obliterate the 4th district as previously drawn (see above maps), and cause it to expel a White Republican incumbent (Randy Forbes) and replace him with a black Democrat. This was easily accomplished. However a side effect was to significantly alter Brat's 7th district, much to his detriment, as you can see from the following maps.

VA-7 results in 2014


VA-7 results in 2018

Bad areas of Chesterfield and Henrico counties in the Richmond suburbs were added to VA-7, causing their proportion of the district vote to increase to around 60% from 50%. Brat still won in 2016 fairly easily, but with a margin (15 points) that was noticeably down from what it had been in 2014 (24 points). Prior to redistricting CD-7 was rated as R+10; after redistricting it was closer to R+2. Then came the 2018 election, the district flipped from blue to red (proper color usage) where it has remained, and Brat was finished. Democrats were happy; the GOPe was elated.

Photo credit: David Zalubowski /AP

In Colorado, Lauren Boebert took the first successful step in her bid for re-election in her new district (CD-4) as she easily defeated 5 other Republicans in the June 25th primary. Boebert, the current incumbent in CD-3, did not run in the special CD-4 election to replace Ken Buck, the formerly righteous conservative who ran shrieking to the left and exited a few months ago in order to hamstring the narrow GOP House majority even further than it already was.

Boebert is forever a prime target of liberals and other haters in both parties. Because winning the primary in the heavily-Republican 4th district should be tantamount to re-election, the haters are going to have to deal with Boebert in Congress for another two years. Ha ha.

Democrats are not entirely conceding the seat, although they suffered a setback when their Chosen One, liberal Ike McCorkle, was unexpectedly defeated in the Rat primary. McCorkle had all the money he needed, and was going to wrap himself in the American flag and try to pose as a moderate, pro-military Democrat. Instead, the Dem candidate will be Trisha Calvarese; she's from the far-left wing of the party and just lost the CD-4 special election by almost 25 points. She'll almost certainly do better in November, assuming the Democrats (motivated, along with the RINOs, by their intense hatred of Boebert) feel like wasting money to achieve a 10-15 point loss instead of a 25-point landslide defeat which they can get for free.

Photo credit: NY Post

On June 25, Jamaal "Fire Chief" Bowman (D-NY) was soundly defeated in the Democrat primary in New York's 16th congressional district by Westchester County executive George Latimer (D-Israel). Bowman thus becomes the first member of the radical leftist Democrat coven known as "The Squad" to be defeated in a re-election bid.

Bowman was first elected to Congress in 2020 after he surprised 16-term incumbent Democrat Eliot Engel in the primary. No Republican bothered to run, so Bowman won 84% to 16% against a Conservative party candidate in November. The elderly incumbent lost because of being allegedly out of touch with the district, and he was thought to be insufficiently dedicated to racist causes like "Black Lives Matter"; BLM's largely-unprosecuted violence, rioting and destruction were enormously popular among the far left in 2020, in New York's 16th district and elsewhere.

The GOP did field a token candidate against Bowman in 2022, but almost no money at all was raised on her behalf, and Bowman cruised to another easy general election win (64% to 36%) although he did struggle somewhat in the primary, taking barely 50% of the vote in a 3-way race.

As the Washington Times noted while patriotic Americans were celebrating Bowman's defeat, the Congressman's antics had gotten him in mild trouble even before his racist rhetoric against Israel and his support of the Hamas terrorists after their October 7 attack.

Known for his loud theatrics off the House floor, Mr. Bowman pulled a fire alarm in a U.S. Capitol office building in September [2023] -- a false alarm that delayed a critical spending vote that House Democrats wanted to delay. He previously endorsed 9/11 conspiracy theories and recently said reports of Hamas terrorists raping Israelis on Oct. 7 were "propaganda".

Westchester County, NY

People who get their demographic information from television sitcom reruns may believe that Westchester County is a bastion of upscale White Republicans in a bucolic setting of well-manicured lawns and endless golf courses. To them, it must be confusing that such an area would have elected and then re-elected a black racist who is one of the most far-left Democrats in the entire House.

Photo credit: Bettmann Archive

In the early 1960's, Hollywood ultra-liberal Carl Reiner placed the main character's home in New Rochelle in "The Dick Van Dyke Show". A decade later, Hollywood ultra-liberal Norman Lear created a spinoff of "All in the Family" based around the strident liberal character of Maude Findlay. The show, called "Maude", was set in the village of Tuckahoe.

"The Dick Van Dyke Show" was generally non-political, but by the time "Maude" hit the airwaves in the early 1970's, it was fashionable in Hollywood to portray women as powerful and influential liberal shrews rather than as dowdy housewives. The writers and producers of "Maude" decided to forego entertainment in order to positively address trendy left-wing issues on a weekly basis, with the main character consistently and courageously taking unpopular (i.e., liberal) stands in supposedly ultra-conservative Tuckahoe. As with "All in the Family", Lear was shrewd enough to know that the audience would eventually balk at being fed foul-tasting medicine all of the time, so the writers of Lear's programs portrayed Maude (and Rob "Meathead" Reiner's character on AITF) as being wrong on rare occasions.

Photo credit: YouTube

When Rob and Laura Petrie and their son Richie were living in Westchester County in their early 60's sitcom world, the county was over 90% White and gladly voted for Republicans -- albeit liberal Republicans. Westchester's influence in New York elections peaked in Maude's 1970's, at which time demographic deterioration was picking up speed as refugees from New York City invaded in larger numbers. This naturally caused many of the good people of the county to flee to more distant places such as the Hudson Valley, further Upstate, or Florida, the mass exodus serving to push Westchester further left.

Formerly rock-solid Republican Westchester became Democrat-friendly territory during the 1980's and 1990's though it did support liberal GOP Governor George Pataki three times. By the early 2000's political sanity in Westchester had vanished and the area has been continuing to move ever leftward since then -- accelerating even more during the Trump years. In 2024, Whites comprise at most about 50% of the population, and voter registration figures also tell an ugly story. The once-overwhelming GOP majority disappeared for good at least 35 years ago, and Republicans now account for less than 20% of all voters in Westchester County while Democrats exceed 50%. Why did folks like Rob and Laura vote with their feet and forsake Westchester County? Because they weren't idiots, that's why.

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2024 U.S. House Virginia Colorado New York

Photo credit: NY "Independent" Redistricting Commission

There's considerable talk about how the Democrats played nice this time by not screwing Republicans as hard as they were expected to (i.e. as hard as possible). Doddering old NYGOP chairman Ed Cox -- yes, THAT Ed Cox, Tricky Dick's son-in-law -- believes that his party was merely bent over to a small degree, therefore he has unilaterally declared that there will be no lawsuits filed against this Democrat gerrymander.

Even though Democrats never had any reason to fear a challenge to their latest attempt to seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives, they wanted to implement a plan which would be described by the always-cooperative media as "modest" yet still be highly effective. This modest Rat plan rigs the election outcomes against the four remaining vulnerable freshmen GOP incumbents in New York as much as necessary, while mostly leaving the other districts alone. Aside from the one formerly represented by George Santos and recently lost in a special election; the Democrats are taking no chances of that district flipping back to Republican control in November.

Here is an article which reveals Democrat gaslighting regarding their New York gerrymander, with a surprisingly fair (by far-left media standards) account of the situation in between all of the usual drivel supplied by the quotes of liberal Democrats:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/02/new-york-redistricting-maps-democrats-gerrymandering-house-majority.html

Their punch line is that this gerrymander is plenty good enough for Democrats -- which it is -- and if it had been rejected and replaced by a more aggressive Democrat gerrymander authored by the state legislature, even sleepy Ed Cox would have been inspired to take action. The resulting lawsuit would have possibly required that the current (2022) district lines be used in the meantime, and even worse (for Democrats) the suit may have succeeded and caused a fairer district map to be created. By reaching just enough, but not overreaching here, liberals have greatly increased their chances of House control in 2025 despite their crocodile tears.

The significantly endangered New York freshmen Republicans are Anthony D'Esposito (CD-4), Mike Lawler (CD-17), Marc Molinaro (CD-19) and especially Brandon Williams (CD-22). They were significantly endangered even before having to deal with newly-gerrymandered districts, as we have written several times. Each of these four are cowardly liberal backstabbers -- just ask George Santos -- but at least they're our cowardly liberal backstabbers; they have R's after their names and that's a lot better than having a D there.

Well, it's a little better anyway. Maybe.

1. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-1): 47%
2. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (OR-5): 64%
3. Mike Lawler (NY-17): 65%
4. Tom Kean, Jr. (NY-7): 67%
5. Mike Turner (OH-10): 70%
6. Don Bacon (NE-2): 71%
7. Anthony D'Esposito (NY-4): 72%
8. Young Kim (CA-40): 72%
9. Kevin Kiley (CA-3): 72%
10. Andrew Garbarino (NY-2): 72%
11. Marc Molinaro (NY-19): 73%
12. David Valadao (CA-22): 73%

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2024 U.S. House New York Democrat gerrymander Say goodbye to Speaker Johnson

Photo credit: WABC

On Thursday, Emerson College released numerous 2024 election polls including one for the mid-February special election in New York's 3rd Congressional District. That election was necessitated when freshman Republican George Santos was expelled from Congress last December at the behest of his own party, so as not to serve as a distraction from Republican efforts (to lose?) in November.

The special election pits liberal Democrat Thomas Suozzi, a former Congressman, against Nassau county legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip. Suozzi opted to run for Governor in 2022 rather than seek re-election to the 3rd district; Suozzi knew full well that he had zero chance of winning the Democrat gubernatorial primary, and finished a dismal 3rd with only 13% of the vote. So why did he even run?

Pilip has a fascinating background: she is of Ethiopian-Israeli descent and moved from Ethiopia to Israel at the age of 12. She later joined the Israeli Army as a paratrooper. She is the mother of 7 children and immigrated from Israel to Great Neck (Long Island). Although allegedly still a registered Democrat, she ran on the Republican and Conservative tickets in 2021 and won a seat in the Nassau County legislature in a heavily Democrat district.

The Emerson poll, which was taken from January 13-15, has Suozzi only narrowly ahead of Pilip, 45% to 42% among registered voters. However: among likely voters Suozzi's margin increases to 14 points (51% to 37%). This reflects typical Democrat motivation and organization in an important special election, and reflects typical lack of same in the Republican party.

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U.S. House 2024 New York Special election The 'shame' of the Republicans

Photo credit: ANNA MONEYMAKER/THE NEW YORK TIMES VIA REDUX

We like her aggressive attitude.

Nobody should like her voting record in Congress.

She's been a complete squish through most of her career, and nobody needs to wave that off and bother pretending that it's because "Duh, sheez frum Noo Yawk" and therefore must automatically represent some liberal district in the middle of a ghetto (which would somehow elect a Republican???) or some demographically deteriorating soccer mommy/country club suburb in Westchester County.

Stefanik's district is at the far northern end of the state, far away from all of the above, and is solidly Republican. It never elects a Democrat.

Well, except for a couple of terms starting in a 2009 special election in which establishment putzes like Newt Gingrich tried to foist a left-wing Republican named Dede Scozzafava upon the area. A good conservative, Doug Hoffman, had the support of lots of voters but not the GOPe, so he had to run on the Conservative ballot line only. Her support dropping to almost zero (actually 5.7%), Scozzafava spitefully withdrew from the race at the last minute, endorsed liberal Democrat Bill Owens (thanks again, Newt) and took just enough votes away from Hoffman to prevent him from winning.

Other than that and the two elections which followed, when Owens somehow eked out two more wins before fleeing, you have to go back to the 1800s or earlier to find a Democrat U.S. House member from this part of New York. And you may not even find one then.

In this district Stefanik doesn't need to run shrieking hysterically to the left in order to get elected. But she does so anyway. Or at least she used to -- that may be changing.

Photo credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP; Leah Millis/Reuters

Even given her recent rightward trend and her gender, that hardly means Stefanik is the best possible option. [Sacrilegious though it is, we've liked Tulsi Gabbard for a while despite her congressional voting record -- we feel she has "evolved". But we don't completely trust her.]

It should be noted that a truly conservative woman probably need not apply for the position. The Republicans aren't going to make that Sarah Palin "mistake" again, regardless of the fact (which the GOPe refuses to accept) that the only reason John McCain got any conservative votes at all was the presence of Palin on the ticket. That plus the sheer odiousness of the Democrat puppet which opposed him in '08.

There is likely a desire to select a female VP strategically, i.e. one from a liberal state, in the completely futile hope that her presence will flip that liberal state's electoral votes to Trump. If someone along those lines is absolutely necessary, better to make a choice from a critical swing state than one from a totally lost cause like New York or even Hawaii. Are any ladies from Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin available?

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Trump 2024 Veep Elise Stefanik New York Anybody but Nimrod

Another domino falls against the probability of the GOP continuing to maintain House control after 2024. Maybe a house of cards would have been a better image for the fragile and timid Republican majority in Congress.

On December 12 the Wall Street Journal published an article which noted that a cadre of liberal Democrat judges in New York has given their party a significant opportunity to seize control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November of 2024. They did this by green-lighting a hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymander -- a belated re-drawing of congressional district lines -- which is likely to result in the ouster of four Republicans (not to mention the already-departed George Santos) from the New York delegation.

With the GOP having only the most narrow margin to work with the House, not that it's often easy to tell that they actually have control at all, a swing of four seats from R to D is extremely important. And that's only a portion of what Democrats in black robes are doing to help their party's cause (see below).

The WSJ article notes that "The [previous] map resulted in Republicans winning 11 of 26 seats" in New York in 2022. That statement is completely wrong insofar as it implies a favorable "map" had anything whatsoever to do with Republicans overachieving and winning those 11 seats.

In 2020 Democrats won 19 out of 27 congressional districts in New York. The map which was used in 2022 was even better for them, favoring Democrats in 19 or 20 out of 26 seats. The GOP merely got lucky in 2022 and won nearly every close race in marginal D+ districts (CD-3, CD-4, CD-17, CD-19, CD-22).

Even with no new Democrat gerrymander, they were highly likely to lose most of those next year anyway. The bloodbath will commence next February with the special election in CD-3, where Santos was ousted by his liberal RINO colleagues such as his next-door "neighbor" in CD-4, Anthony D'Esposito, who is the most likely of all the remaining NY Republican freshmen to get his ass kicked next November. But the Rats ain't taking any chances of more fluke GOP wins and are going to rig the game to pick up numerous House seats in NY next year.

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U.S. House Redistricting New York Gerrymander New Mexico

Photo credit: AP

In 2024, mainly early in the year, a quartet of special elections will be held to fill four U.S. House vacancies which have already occurred or are upcoming. Cowardly Republicans expelled their conservative colleague George Santos (R-NY) on December 1, and three other Representatives have announced their pending retirements: Brian Higgins (D-NY), Bill Johnson (R-OH) and Kevin McCarthy (Squish-CA).

The special election to replace Santos was hastily called -- it will take place on February 13 -- by Democrats who rightfully anticipate an easy pickup of a House seat that will reduce the margin of GOP control to 7 seats (221-214). The remaining three special elections, as yet unscheduled, are unlikely to alter the balance of power any further.

Santos' election in 2022, like those of most other NY freshmen that year, was a fluke. Santos' district (NY-3) is a Democrat district and not even particularly marginal; Rats outnumber Republicans by over 10% and that fact will be apparent both in the special election and in November, 2024. Republicans normally come closer than 10% in most elections in NY-3, which means that more Democrats than Republicans cross party lines and/or "independents" break slightly more to the right than the left, however all indications point in the direction of an uphill climb for the GOP to win anything here.

Particularly the February special election, where Rat voters and the Rat party organization will be highly motivated while the RNC as usual will likely sit on its hands and blame Santos for ruining the district -- when it simply reverts to what it has always been in recent years. In special elections, low voter turnout is the norm and motivation/organization is everything.

Some have suggested that the series of fluke GOP House wins in New York in 2022 was a coattail effect from having a popular GOP nominee for Governor (Lee Zeldin was not quite popular enough, unfortunately) at the top of the ticket. Nothing like that is going to happen again in NY in 2024, and after the Democrats take the NY-3 special election barring a major upset, they will be significantly favored to hold it next November.

Anthony D'Esposito, the liberal "Republican" Santos-backstabber from the next-door 4th district in New York will (along wth some other GOP House members from New York) probably be ousted in 2024 too, but count on him running hysterically to the left even more so than he already is over the next several months in his frantic effort to keep his cushy job.

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2024 Special election George Santos Kevin McCarthy Bill Johnson New York California Ohio

Yesterday's outcomes were almost entirely predictable yet were considered disappointing by the good people of America -- the same phenomenon as occurred in 2022 when the mis-named "Red Wave" never materialized and even positive developments were considered to be crushing defeats because those positive outcomes did not occur on the massive scale which many people ridiculously expected.

Of course there were lots of adverse outcomes yesterday to be gloomy about:

In Kentucky, GOP gubernatorial candidate Daniel Cameron was heavily outspent and allowed his opponents (Governor Andy Beshear and the liberal-Democrat media) to define him, primarily in a manner which made Cameron unpalatable to the rabid single-issue pro-abortionists of the suburbs. Being outspent and being ceaselessly under attack by the media have always been twin burdens for Republican campaigns, which normally leaves the GOP candidate two options:

1. Spend all of the time (and money) reacting and playing defense instead of attacking and playing offense, or

2. Lay down and give up entirely.

Cameron's 2023 campaign seems to have selected the latter option. The Kentucky election outcomes exactly mirrored 2019 as anticipated, with the Republicans sweeping every one of the other statewide elections including the important Attorney General office.

Back to the bad news, though there's really nothing here which should be considered surprising:

Some disgusting Democrats including one in-your-face transvestite won spots in the Virginia legislature as the Rats expanded their hold on the Senate (as expected) while also seizing control of the House (that was thought to be a tossup). Your political career was nice while it lasted, Governor Youngkin. Actually, Youngkin may have a chance (a small chance) of ousting radical leftist Timmy Kaine from the Senate in 2024 if Youngkin chooses to enter that race. Some Republican should.

New Jersey was another disappointment with the GOP expecting gains but getting zilch in the state Senate, and actually losing seats in the state Assembly. They're still counting votes, so the Republicans may not be done losing yet.

An abortioNazi won the Pennsylvania Supreme Court election, keeping the PA Democrat Supreme Court at a 5-2 partisan breakdown.

Finally, the solid "red" state of Ohio was bamboozled into voting for unlimited abortion. Whether most voters knew it or not, they simultaneously opted to bypass parental consent for their underage daughters to receive abortions. The new law also bypasses parents when young children are brainwashed by adult perverts (such as schoolteacher-groomers and the liberal media) regarding how wonderful it would be for the children to mutilate themselves via sex change operations. Read the fine print next time, Ohioans.

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2023 Kentucky Missisippi New Jersey Virginia Abortionist Ohio Daniel Cameron Pittsburgh

Photo credit: AP Photo/Charles Krupa

The Trump-haters and GOP establishment shills who run "RedState.com" have decided that Donald Trump blew it again. It happened yesterday in a tiny New Hampshire district in which a liberal Democrat defeated a MAGA Republican in a special election that most voters ignored. Trump himself likely wasn't even aware of the election, much less involved in it in any way.

The author of the article (someone called "Bonchie") believes that the results of this bellwether (LOL) election, in which approximately 0.00000001% of the U.S. electorate participated, portends certain doom for the GOP in 2024 because we haven't learned the "lesson" that conservative candidates simply cannot win anywhere. He may not be wrong about what will occur in '24, but his reasoning is quite faulty; inferring anything from an ultra-low turnout special election in a microscopic state House district (don't get confused and think this was a Congressional election) is moronic.

Well, unless it suits your agenda.

Remember in 2022 when the GOP won an actual Congressional special election in south Texas and that result -- historic though it was -- was supposed to mean "muh Red Wave" in November as opposed to being just an isolated fluke outcome which was reversed in November? How'd that wave work out?

Regarding yesterday's irrelevancy in New Hampshire, the author's hyperventilating assertion that because Governor Squish Sununu had a 22-point margin of victory last November in this district meant that it should have been a slam-dunk for Republicans is deliberately misleading. Instead of pretending that this is some "dark red" district, which it damn sure is not, if the author was interested in the truth instead of trying to induce panic, he would have pointed out that although Trump won this district in 2020.... it was by a whopping 26 votes which is less than 1 percent. And that result is much more in line with the true current political leaning of the district than what Squish got.

This is a marginal, slightly right-of-center, wimpy/moderate district at best, consisting of a couple of tiny towns in Rockingham County. That doesn't mean the GOP couldn't have won yesterday, but Itchy or Scratchy or Poochie or whatever the author's name is should drop the stupid fallacy that this was supposed to be an easy win, much less extrapolate from what a few hundred voters did in New Hampshire yesterday to nationwide calamity in 2024.

As to the quality of the GOP candidate, of course the Democrat media is going to take every opportunity to slime all Republicans who are running for office (no matter how small the office), and there's no sense in making it easier for them by exclaiming that "Jeebus told me Trump really won in 2020!!!!", something along the lines of which the GOP candidate, pastor James Guzofski, is alleged to have done here. Or by being set up for a grope date in a movie theater with the Democrat cameras running (Lauren Boebert).

In the end, what this miniscule election means for 2024 all by itself is absolutely nothing, despite the hysteria.

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New Hampshire State House election 2023

Photo credit: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

The article states, quite accurately, that a "prior left-wing court invented out of whole cloth a constitutional provision that forced the legislature to create so-called fair districts."

Last November the voters in North Carolina delivered a 5-2 Republican majority to the state Supreme Court, and today that court came through by not merely overturning the illegal judicial interference with last year's redistricting, but also restoring a voter ID law which was duly passed by the voters in 2018 before being thrown out by partisan Democrat judges.

This is all great news, although the hyperventilating in the article about the GOP picking up 4 House seats in the Tarheel State in 2024 after the maps are redrawn is not terribly realistic, however a gain of 2 or even 3 might be. On the flip side of the coin, Democrats in New York are suing because they were not allowed to implement the most ridiculously partisan gerrymander (with all due respect to Illinois) in the entire nation. The lawsuit seeks to restore that gerrymander or something very close -- if not worse.

Many of the series of fluke U.S. House victories the GOP attained in New York in 2022 -- CD-3 (Santos), CD-4 (D'Esposito), CD-17 (Lawler), CD-19 (Molinaro) and CD-22 (Williams) -- were likely to be undone in 2024 even without a new gerrymander, plus CD-1 (LaLota) and CD-11 (Malliotakis) aren't exactly 100% safe either; Malliotakis may appear safe due to the margin she received in 2022, but that's only because the Democrats ran a complete stooge against her and they will not make that mistake again.

If the Democrats prevail in New York court, it will offset the presumed North Carolina gains, and more.

Adverse changes will also be coming to the district map in Ohio and possibly other states, with South Carolina as another example. If those changes in Ohio are not implemented for the 2024 election then they definitely will be by 2026. Republicans expected to pick up 2 House seats in 2022 in Ohio while maybe sacrificing one seat (that sacrifice was pretty much mandated by liberal court order when the court rejected the Republicans' original Ohio map); what actually happened was that the Republicans picked up nothing while losing one seat, as the much ballyhooed (and mis-named) "red wave" became not even a trickle, though at least they held the U.S. Senate seat with J.D. Vance.

Because the expected gains never materialized, even a less favorable district map might do little or no damage to the composition of the Ohio congressional delegation, in which the Republicans currently hold a 10-5 edge.

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North Carolina Redistricting Democrat gerrymander overturned New York Democrat gerrymander restored

Photo credit: Tony Adamis/Special to the Times Union

Anyone assuming that Republicans are going to win most of the close ones in November is delusional. We have to turn out in numbers that make these races far less close.

Four years ago, in the highest-turnout midterm election in U.S. history, the GOP was annihilated and some presumed it was because Republicans weren't motivated (wrong) while the Rats were highly motivated by their hatred of Trump (bingo). R turnout was actually up substantially that year over where it had been in 2014; but D turnout was absolutely off the charts.

The days of Republicans being able to run the table in comparatively low-turnout midterms such as 1994, 2010 and 2014 are over. 2018 is the new midterm turnout model, and 2022's turnout in November (at least on the left) is going to be "2018 on steroids".

The GOP establishment, the ones who control the ad buys and the purse strings and who normally support only liberals and moderates while giving the shaft to conservatives, better get on the ball and run good, effective, hard-hitting ads anywhere the Democrat-controlled media will permit them to run -- and run them for ALL candidates, not just their RINO pets -- and try to get Republican enthusiasm to be as great as Democrat enthusiasm. It wasn't in 2018, it wasn't in 2020, and we're heading for a repeat in 2022.

If they don't get on the ball (and surely we can count on Ronna Romney, Mitch McConnell and the RNC/NRSC to do the right thing, LOL) then there are going to be a lot of so-called experts with dazed expressions on their faces on November 9th, looking around helplessly and wondering where "muh red wave" disappeared to.

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U.S. House New York Special election 2022 Bad candidate Narrow loss

Photo credit: Getty Images

With Democrats sabotaging Republican primaries all over the map in 2022, it's refreshing to see someone in the GOP finally taking the initiative to turn the tables. Unfortunately it's going to be a complete dud here in New York. The filing deadline was nearly two months ago, so there is no way to get a Republican onto the ballot as a fake Democrat and we're stuck picking from the Dems who have already filed. And how many of them qualify as "moderate"? Probably zero.

Of New York's 26 U.S. House districts, only 13 of them are currently held by Democrats and have multiple Democrats running. In the other 13, either Democrats are unopposed in the primary or the districts are already held by Republicans (so who cares which Rat wins the primary?). At the state Senate level, there are only two districts in the entire state in which multiple Democrats filed to run. Nice try, though.

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New York 2022 GOP "tricks" Too late