Another Big Night - 2023 Has Been A Very Good Year for Democrats

Election Recap Today at 1pm ET - Still Time To RSVP/Welcome New Subscribers!

Friends,

Just amazing. Huge. Incredible. Inspiring. Important. Vital. Encouraging. Exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

November 2023 was another remarkable election for Democrats. We’ve been on an extraordinary run since the spring of 2022, and as we all hoped last night saw that strong performance continue across the US. We may end up calling it a blue wave when it is all said and done, as there is lots of evidence of Democratic success down ballot all over the country, including, wonderfully, in school board races against extremist MAGA school board members.

We will have time to dig into the data in the coming days but what is sticking with me most this morning is how much our success is coming from the bottom up, the “Democratic grassroots” (we need a better term - I prefer proud patriots), regular people who’ve decided they are going to do everything they can to ensure that our freedoms and democracy don’t slip away. Over these last few months hundreds of thousands of every day Americans ran for school board, donated, texted, called, postcarded, canvassed, info warriored/spread Hopium, and many many more voted. All of you made this election happen, made our success in elections throughout 2023 happen, made our success in 2022 happen - all of you are doing the work, getting it done, and we are winning, for our country, for democracies and freedom everywhere, for our kids and our grandkids. In a time of enormous challenge for our country, Americans of every stripe are standing up, answering the call and fighting hard. And we are winning my friends, we are winning and I am so proud to be in this fight with all of you.

At 1pm ET today I am hosting a live discussion of about 2023, this great Democratic year. Please RSVP if you haven’t, and if you can’t make it I will be sending out the video later today.

A few more quick notes:

Opening up the comments section for all members of our community today. Let’s spend some time together bathing in all this happiness and Hopium!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As of now we’ve won 5 of our 6 targeted Virginia races. Two of our wins - HD 65 and HD 97 - were flips, Democrats winning in Republican seats. With us at 51 in the Assembly right now those two wins may be the difference between us being in the majority or the minority. Congrats to all of you who worked so hard in Virginia! It was a huge night for the people of Virginia, and for the whole country. And to those of you who who supported our Virginia Hopium campaign, know that your work literally may have been the difference in flipping the Virginia house from red to blue. Thank you.

Save the date - we have the new, dynamic Democratic Party Chair of North Carolina, Anderson Clayton, coming to talk to us on Tuesday, November 28th at 7pm ET. Winning North Carolina is going to be one of our big Hopium projects in 2024.

How deep and strong is the Democratic bench? Harris, Beshear, Newsom, Whitmer, Shapiro, Jeffries, etc….it’s remarkable. Compared to DeSantis, Vivek, Youngkin, Speaker Johnson - losers and jokers all. The Democratic Party is very very strong right now.

Below is my current “election data I most interested in” (not polling) summary. I look forward to updating it with you in the coming days, as we have more wins to celebrate!

And I end this post with what may be the very best Tweet of this awful MAGA era.

Great job everyone! Savor the wins when they come, rest up, and lets start talking later this week about what we all want to do together in 2024 to get to 55 and make the election as clear as a repudiation of MAGA as we can. What the country needs, and deserves. And something we need to do, together.

Keep working hard all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Simon

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Updated 11/4/23 - Friends, yes, there is a lot of polling out there. Some of it is good, some of it’s not so good. I’m not really worried about it. In fact, here’s the election data I’m most interested in right now:

The Democratic Party Is Strong and On A Very Good Popular Vote Run - Democrats have won more votes in 7 of the last 8 Presidential elections, the best popular vote run of any political party in US history. In the last 4 Presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the vote, our best showing over 4 elections since FDR’s Presidency. Can we improve on that performance and get to 55% nationally in 2024? I think so.

A reminder that Democrats only broke above 50.1% of the vote once from 1948 all the way to 2004 - 1964, the year after JFK’s assassination. So, that we’ve broken above 51% in 3 of our last 4 elections is a pretty remarkable achievement.

2008 52.9-47.5 Obama-McCain

2012 51.1-47.2 Obama-Romney

2020 51.3-46.8 Biden-Trump

Democrats Keep Outperforming Expectations - In a “red wave” year, 2022, Democrats gained ground from 2020 in 7 key battlegrounds: AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH, PA. We also picked up 4 state legislative chambers, 2 governorships, and 1 US Senate seat. As we’ve written 2022 was not a single nationalized election, but really two elections - a bluer election in the battleground where we gained, and a redder election outside where we did not.

We’ve seen this strong Dem performance continue into 2023 with impressive wins in CO, FL, OH and WI and in special elections across the US. A new 538 analysis: Democrats have been wining big in special elections finds Dems outperforming the partisan lean in districts this year by an average of 10 points in close to 40 special elections across the US - this is a big deal, and similar to what we saw post-Dobbs last year. The Daily Kos special election tracker now has Dems up 7.6 points over 2020 in 27 elections this year. Very encouraging stuff.

Current Congressional Polling is Very Encouraging for Democrats - We are starting to get data now in the aftermath of the GOP’s Speaker debacle and it’s seriously bad news for Republicans. The current Economist/YouGov tracker has Congressional favs/unfavs at

Congressional Ds 44-51 (-7)/Congressional Rs 35-59 (-25)

Navigator just released its quarterly in-depth look at battleground House districts, and it too finds truly terrible numbers for Congressional Republicans right now:

If this data holds, it’s significant for two reasons: 1) Democrats will be the clear favorites to win the House 2) This degraded GOP Congressional brand will drag down Trump and the overall GOP brand in the Presidential battlegrounds.

I’m beginning to think that this is the most important polling out there right now.

The Blueing of the Southwest - Democrats are having their best run in the Southwest since the 1940s and 50s. In 2004 Bush won AZ, CO, NM, NV, Rs controlled 5 of their 8 Senate seats, 14 of their 21 House seats. In 2020 Biden was the first Democratic President to win all 4 of these states in a single election since FDR. Today Rs control none of those 8 Senate seats and we control 14 of 24 House seats there. Our success with Hispanic voters and in heavily Hispanic parts of the country remains one of the Democratic Party’s most successful party-wide efforts over the past generation of US politics.