Merry PVI-mas
Special election reckoning, 2017 redux, disillusioned Democrats, what matters more in 2025, abortion support by state, the mystery of rising right track, ChatGPT's new image model, extreme candidates
No. 356 | April 4th, 2025
🇺🇲 2026
The Cook Political Report has released their 2026 PVI scores.
The average seat now sits at R+1, which is now closer to the nation as a whole. That’s because Republican gerrymanders are down.
Other key takeaways:
Trump won 230 Congressional districts, but House Republicans only won 220 seats.
The number of competitive seats ticked up slightly, largely because very Democratic seats drifted into more competitive territory due to Realignment. (But Republicans haven’t flipped very many of these seats just yet.)
For the first time, the opposite party controls no seat outside of the competitive zone (R+5 or more, or D+5 or more).
Nonpartisan redistricting does make seats more competitive — the 40% of seats drawn this way represent 56% of the competitive House seats.
Republicans fell short in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election and turned in a pair of underperformances in Florida.
For those keeping track, here’s Federal special election performance compared to the previous presidential margins for the following cycles:
2017-18: D+10.6
2019-20: D+4.8
2021-22: R+3.7
2023-24: D+3.5
The average of all specials so far (including state legislative) from The Downballot’s tracker, is D+11.6.
WaPo has a visual of each individual race, and the story it tells in comparison to 2017-18 is one of declining variability.
While Democrats may have a lot of problems, Nate Cohn writes, but turning out for special elections isn’t one of them.
This from David Kanevsky is going be a *taps the sign* post I use a lot. Special election results are almost always a result of who turns out.
🔵 The Democrats
Despite special election successes, rank and file Democrats are still dissatisfied with their leaders.
📊 Public Opinion
New Gallup polling shows Americans are increasingly worried about the U.S. economy, healthcare and Social Security.
PRRI's new report shows abortion views across all 50 states.
We’ll see what happens after this week, but Karlyn Bowman asks what’s behind the bounce in the right track number on surveys?
So, right track is rising but Americans don’t believe the economy has improved. They are becoming more negative about Trump and they believe his sweeping tariffs will hurt the country, relations with allies, and their pocketbooks. What gives? Many years ago, Ronald Reagan’s pollster Richard Wirthlin told me that right/wrong track responses weren’t usually about policy. They were about values. Well, this doesn’t work very well now because in areas such as honesty and character, Americans don’t like Donald Trump’s values. So perhaps the rise in right track is related to his boldness and that, for better or worse, something is being done. Or it could be a fluke and, like Trump’s other ratings, right track responses will fall, too, especially after the stock market’s reaction to Trump’s tariff announcement.
👫 Demographics
More confirmation: Religious Nones have stopped rising.
💻 Artificial Intelligence
Ethan Mollick breaks down the breakthroughs in ChatGPT’s new image model.
🔬 Academia
A roundup of research shows that ideologically extreme Democratic candidates may slightly boost base turnout but likely lose more swing voters.
😂 Humor
Take a look at this new way to enhance your data ✨.
