Winning streak!
All too often, it’s easy to write off a year without a presidential election as an off-year, and assume that your life will more or less be the same if you don’t bother voting – and when it comes to odd-numbered years, where the only elections on the ballot are often local ones, turnout tends to be even lower.
This is why the party in the White House typically fares worse than the one that doesn’t have the presidency – as the latter is less likely to approve of the president’s job and is more motivated to vote for change, while the former tends to be fairly content with things the way they are.
We are, however, living in times that are anything but ordinary, and a rogue right-wing SCOTUS is a major reason why Democratic voters are continuing to overperform in local elections across the country – with two sizable victories on Tuesday night – oh, and we did it with 60% of the turnout from last year’s midterms.
Not only did Democrats flip the state house in Pennsylvania, they also won a legislative seat in New Hampshire by double digits that Donald Trump won back in 2020, which puts them in a prime position to flip the state house there in just a few months with another election in a Trump +8 district. On Nov 7, we’ll also have state houses and state senate bodies in both New Jersey (to expand our majority) and Virginia (to flip), and any flip could have an impact for decades to come. Let’s make sure Democrats keep up their winning streak!
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making