New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney has fallen. The top New Jersey Democrat was clipped by Republican candidate Edward Durr who raised next to nothing to defeat him. You can't get much done in the state without Sweeney's blessing, and he was a fixture in South Jersey. He finally conceded after a moment of intrigue when 12,000 ballots were "recently found" last week. Rebecca wrote last night that he finally conceded, noting that all the votes had been counted and it was over. Leah first covered this upset on election night this month.
Should we be elated? Sure—a Democrat lost. Having lived in New Jersey for over 20 years, I'd never thought I'd see the day when someone like Sweeney would be given the boot, especially in his Senate district. Yet, was it truly an upset in the sense that it came out of left field? When you dig deeper into the numbers, not really. Election Daily, a subdivision of Decision Desk HQ, crunched the numbers and found one election that had Sweeney's downfall almost etched in stone. It was the 2020 election believe it or not. Donald Trump did very well in that district, which explains why the insane flips in Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland counties, which make up Sweeney's district, could have been foreseen. In 2020, Trump actually got more of the vote with 49.3 percent to Joe Biden's 48.3 percent. With Biden in office now and utterly rudderless – it did provide a solid base for a Republican to mount a campaign – successful or not.
This cycle, Election Daily noted that Gloucester flipped by 21 points. Salem flipped by one point — and Cumberland swung to the GOP by 14 points. The Gloucester collapse was the one that Sweeney couldn't overcome, however. Was it a fluke? That's the default position, but again, the 2020 election sort of was a crystal ball as it saw that the GOP voter share has spiked immensely since Sweeney's 2017 re-elect:
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Given his tenure and extensive campaign infrastructure advantages, it seems easy to write off Sweeney’s loss as a fluke upset in a bad environment. While the outcome was certainly an upset, it may not have been as much of a fluke as we originally thought.
Comparing recent election results here on the municipality level sheds light on some of the forces that have been at work under the hood. The most impactful has been the fact that the district is getting redder. Once prime Obama territory like much of South Jersey, the 3rd saw Trump increase GOP vote share in both of his elections.
Above we compared the 2017 Senate race and the latest Presidential results. Since we do not have 2021 municipality data yet, the last federal result is the probably the best depiction of Durr’s victory that we currently have. Both Biden and Sweeney got roughly the same share of the vote, carrying only the bluest parts of the district.
In Virginia, there was a similar incident. The 2017 elections saw Democrat Wendy Gooditis boot Republican Randy Minchew in the 10th district. This district is a carbon copy of the 10th congressional district that was then represented by Republican Barbara Comstock. Gooditis won by four points, which did not bode well for Comstock in the 2018 midterms. She did indeed lose — badly that year. Was it a bad year for the GOP in keeping with the "party in power loses" trend? Sure — but we knew she was going to be retired way before anyone else.
That House of Delegate race and its implications for Comstock was one of the things highlighted from that cycle, along with the election of Gov. Blackface, who is blessedly ending his tenure with Glenn Youngkin's win over Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
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