The Election in New Jersey Today Could Be Another Indicator

When Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) was inaugurated as governor, she resigned her House seat. Today the voters of NJ-11 will choose her successor. The district is D+5, so in theory, in neutral times, either party could win it even if the Democrat would be the favorite. However, these are not neutral times. Democrats have overperformed in every special election this cycle, sometimes by massive amounts. Today's special election will be another data point to add to the list.

The candidates are Analilia Mejia (D) and Joe Hathaway (R). Mejia, the daughter of immigrants from Colombia and the Dominican Republic, was Bernie Sanders' national political director and is now co-executive director of a grassroots political organization. Hathaway is the former mayor of Randolph, NJ.

Every political observer expects Mejia to win. The big question is by how much. The most recent election was the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, in which the candidate aligned with the Democrats won by 20 points in the mother of all swing states. But what about House special elections? Here are the results for six special House elections this cycle. The TX-18 special election was Democrat vs. Democrat and so is excluded here.

Date	District	Dem margin 2024	Dem margin special	Net
April 1, 2025	FL-01	-37	-15	D+22
April 1, 2025	FL-06	-30	-14	D+16
Sept. 9, 2025	VA-11	+34	+50	D+16
Sept. 23, 2025	AZ-07	+22	+40	D+18
Dec 2, 2025	TN-07	-22	-9	D+13
Apr. 7, 2026	GA-14	-37	-12	D+25

The average here is D+18. But how predictive is this? We do have a bit of data. There were also special elections in 2017 and 2018 and a midterm election in 2018. In 2017 and 2018, there were seven special House elections. The average shift was D+13. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats flipped 41 House seats. That is less likely this time due to even more heavily gerrymandered districts than in 2018. Still, there was some predictive value to the special elections last time. Tomorrow we will have a new data point for our collection. (V)

Republican Senators Are Caught Between Trump and the Pope

Many Republican senators are unhappy with Donald Trump getting into a d**k-waving contest with the pope. They think it is unfair. After all, Pope Leo XIV is much more popular than Trump and has a much bigger base (particularly if you include non-Catholics who like him). They are especially worried that, given their respective positions (Trump is for war, Leo is for peace), Leo is going to win this one and maybe also the one on Nov. 3.

Several senators have obliquely told Trump to tone it down. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said: "I would leave the church alone." The other South Dakota senator, Mike Rounds (R-SD), said: "I thought, personally, that the approach that the president took in terms of directly attacking the pope was inappropriate." Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said: "I think popes and presidents should stay in their respective lanes, it's better for all of us." When asked about the AI-generated image of Trump as Dr. Jesus, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said: "I'm glad they took it down. I think he thought about it more and took it down. It's a good decision." If taking it down was a good decision, can we infer that putting it up in the first place was a bad decision?

Democrats were less forgiving. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), who is Catholic, said: "His attacks on Pope Leo are inexcusable, disrespectful and deeply disturbing."

Why are Republican senators nervous? Maybe because they know that Trump won a majority of Catholic voters in 2024 but he is now underwater with that important group. A poll taken late last month shows that among Catholics, 47% approve of Trump (with 23% strongly approving) and 52% disapprove (with 40% strongly disapproving). And that was before Trump engaged with Leo.

The Catholic vote in November could be a problem for Republicans in several places. Polish-American Catholics in Michigan and Ohio, where there are races for governor and senator, might be angry with Trump. Latino Catholics in Arizona and Texas could have a big impact on House races there, and the Senate race in Texas. And even in other places with tight races, antagonizing even a modest bloc of voters is rarely a good idea. Denise Murphy McGraw, the national co-chair of Catholics Vote Common Good, said: "This is our American pope. This isn't some guy from Italy or South America or Poland. Everyone is proud." On the other hand, Steve Bannon praised Trump, saying: "It is good in that it gets more of his conservative Catholic base energized. President Trump is smart politically to do this." We fail to see how attacking the pope energizes the conservative Catholic base. Conservative Catholics are generally more religious than liberal Catholics and are less likely to be anti-pope. (V)

Vance's Bad Week Got Even Worse

This has not be been a good week for J.D. Vance. First, he was sent to Hungary to make sure that Donald Trump's favorite authoritarian, Viktor Orbán, got another term. Orbán was crushed, with the opposition getting the two-thirds majority they needed to rewrite the Hungarian Constitution to undo some of the damage Orbán did. Oops.

Then Vance was tasked with making peace with Iran and got nowhere, possibly due to his approach as a negotiator, which is telling the other side "my way or the highway" and they took the highway (well, the Strait). Maybe he was ordered to make sure the talks failed, but if he wasn't given those orders, he really botched it on his own. That's two strikes against him to start with.

The third one came on Tuesday when he showed up at a meeting of Turning Point USA on the campus of the University of Georgia, in Athens, GA. Talking to TPUSA students in a reddish state should have been a walk in the park—at least compared to trying to convince a bunch of ayatollahs that they shouldn't build nuclear weapons. It didn't go well. To start with, the arena was two-thirds empty, and it wasn't even the largest arena on campus. On top of that, there were awkward questions and sharp criticism of Trump. One attendee, Joseph Bercher, a Catholic, said he voted for Trump but he is no longer a Trump supporter on account of the fake Dr. Jesus image. Jesse Williams said the image was distasteful. Yet another student, C.J. Santini, was unhappy about Trump attacking Leo, saying: "It's just stupid. Stupid." Blake McCluggage did not approve of Trump's profane Easter Sunday message.

However, rather than try to defend Trump, Vance—a recent convert to Catholicism who has unsuccessfully tried to get his Hindu wife to convert as well—blamed the Pope. He said: "It would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality..." Is it not possible that Leo feels that threatening to wipe out a country of 90 million people that was not threatening the U.S. might be immoral?

Vance was also heckled by the audience. One person yelled out: "Jesus Christ does not support genocide!" Another yelled out: "You're killing children! You're bombing children!" This could have been a reference to the U.S. bombing a primary school in southern Iran, killing 150 children. Vance did get the message. He said: "I recognize that young voters do not love the policy we have in the Middle East, OK. I understand."

OK, three strikes this week, but the 2028 Republican primaries are not this week. They are—you got it—in 2028. Still, any aura Vance had of being unstoppable is gone for now. It is also possible that Trump likes the idea of messing with Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and wants them to go after each other for his amusement. His plan could be first embarrass one of them, then embarrass the other one, rinse and repeat. (V)

Trump's Small Tent

Democrats are the big-tent party, with a wide diversity of views ranging from Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and ethnically all over the map. Republicans tend to be more homogeneous. Nevertheless, in 2024, Trump pulled in some groups that normally heavily support Democrats. Some Republican strategists think they have cracked the code and now these former Democrats are all theirs. What they see as a once-in-a-generation event may indeed be a once-in-a-generation event. If it is, some of the gerrymanders this cycle may turn out to be dummymanders. The problem for the Republicans is that their tent has holes all over the place and the rain is pouring in. Here are a few of the problem areas.

• Christians: This is Trump's core base. On Easter morning, he sent out a profanity-laced rant threatening war crimes in Iran and signing off with "Praise be to Allah." Then he threatened to wipe out an entire civilization. Last Sunday, he lit into the pope and called him "WEAK on Crime." Trump seems to think Leo is a Democrat. Actually, Leo (previously known as Robert Prevost), voted in the Republican primaries in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Leo is thus the first Republican pope. Oh, then came the AI image of Trump as Dr. Jesus. Some Christians called this blasphemy and even demonic possession. All these attacks on Christianity could hurt Republicans in November.
  
  
• MAGA Media: All these things have played poorly throughout the MAGA media world. America Firsters like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones are all up in arms about Iran. They didn't sign up for another forever war in the Middle East. In fact, they signed up specifically to avoid any more wars over there.
  
  
• Podcastistan: Podcasters like Joe Rogan, who were with Trump in 2024, are leaving him. They are angry about Iran, but even more so about the Epstein files and suspicious insider trading on the stock market and other markets.
  
  
• Crypto Fans: They were expecting a golden age for crypto. Well, maybe not golden, because gold is an alternative for people who like gambling in financial markets. The results are not what crypto fans wanted, with Bitcoin tanking and lots of self-dealing by insiders going on. It should be noted that what really sunk Orbán in Hungary was not so much his attacks on democracy, but his garden-variety corruption, which Trump has in spades.
  
  
• Farmers: Many of Trump's policies seem aimed straight at farmers. Tariffs and countertariffs make it hard to sell their crops. The war in Iran is driving fertilizer prices through the barn roof, not to mention fuel for tractors and other equipment. The deportations are taking away much of the labor farmers need to plant, tend, and harvest their crops. Times are not good down on the farm and farmers know it.
  
  
• Non-whites: Deep pessimism about inflation and the economy is hitting the marginal voters who turned out for Trump in 2024 hard. These folks don't follow politics, but when they pull up at a gas station and then pull out $100 poorer, they very much notice. And Trump has admitted it is probably not going to get better before November.

Maybe these problems will all resolve themselves before November. Republicans had better hope so. (V)

Trump Wants Banks to Collect Citizenship Status of Customers

Donald Trump (or, more likely, Stephen Miller) has now thought of a new way to make life tough for immigrants and nonimmigrants alike. He (Trump, not Miller) is going to sign an XO ordering banks to collect citizenship information from all their customers. This is likely to be followed by another XO ordering banks to close the accounts of anyone who is not a citizen and to not open any new accounts for noncitizens.

There are so many problems here. First, an XO is an order to the federal bureaucracy to interpret some law in a particular way. It is not an order to any private bank. Congress and the Fed can create new regulations for banks, but not the president. Second, there is no law saying that noncitizens cannot open bank accounts. Green card holders can certainly open bank accounts and so can foreign tourists, although most banks require the tourist to show up in person with a valid passport. Third, this could have a chilling effect on actual citizens who don't want to share sensitive documents with any bank. Fourth, banks will undoubtedly be required to store the proof of citizenship documentation, with the risk that the banks will be hacked and criminals will get copies of passports and other documentation. Fifth, if banks are later required to close accounts of noncitizens, there are surely going to be some mistakes and the people whose accounts are erroneously closed are likely to sue, forcing the banks to hire more lawyers to defend themselves. Sixth, as with voting, an estimated 20 million people who are citizens do not have any documentary proof that they are citizens. What will happen to them? From the banks' point of view, none of this has any value whatsoever for them, so they will strongly oppose it.

In short, another half-baked idea from the Trump White House. We'll see if they try to move forward with it, or they toss it on the (large) pile of other half-baked ideas that went nowhere. (V)

Trump Promises Mass Pardons of Enablers before Leaving Office

Donald Trump often gives subordinates orders that may vary from barely legal to completely illegal. As he gets more and more cornered, he may soon be issuing many orders that are completely illegal and the people receiving them may refuse to carry them out, lest some future administration prosecute them. However, Trump is on top of this and has a solution. He has apparently promised to pardon everyone who works with him before he leaves office. One insider quoted him as saying: "I'll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval." The blast radius has expanded. Earlier this year, he was promising to pardon anyone who came within 10 feet of him.

In one conversation, Trump said he would issue a mass pardon, rather than individual pardons. This could be iffy and people asked to carry out illegal acts might still be worried. While the pardon power is absolute, the courts have never ruled on what form a pardon must take. Very likely, a document stating: "I, Donald John Trump, do hereby pardon Jacob Chansley for his conviction for obstructing an official proceeding on Jan. 6, 2001" and signed by Trump would be an official pardon. But what about a bleat to his lawless social network saying: "Everybody who was within 200 feet of me while I was president is hereby pardoned." Is that a valid pardon? If someone is later charged with some crime and later claims he was within the TFZ (Two-hundred Foot Zone), does he get away with it? How would one prove the distance?

More generally, would some future administration even honor such a pardon? It is certainly possible that some future AG could maintain that a valid pardon must contain these three elements: (1) the name of the person pardoned, (1) the crime committed, and (3) the date of the conviction. The AG could reject pardons for unspecified future prosecutions and maintain that a pardon is only possible for convictions prior to the date of the pardon. It would then be up to the courts to rule on this. The AG could argue that the pardon power was intended to allow the president to correct a miscarriage of justice, as when someone was found guilty of some crime he said he didn't commit and later someone else admitted to having committed the crime. The AG could also argue that the Founders never meant to create a situation in which the president could say to someone: "Here is an undated pardon. Now go, and please commit this list of crimes for me." It is far from certain how the courts would rule in such a case.

A second problem for the would-be criminal (other than worrying about the validity of the pardon) is whether to trust Trump to actually issue the pardon before Jan. 20, 2029, at noon. He could forget or later change his mind. Or he could use an autopen to sign it and then have some future president or court say: "Autopens don't count." (V)

The First 2028 Cattle Call

Normally, the invisible primary starts in January after the midterms. That makes the full campaign almost 2 years, something other countries do in 6 weeks. This time, it looks like campaign season is going to be an absurd 2½ years. Part of the blame here goes to the ever-publicity-seeking Rev. Al Sharpton, who made the first cattle call of the 2028 race by inviting all the leading 2028 Democratic contenders to show up at a convention of his civil rights group, the National Action Network. Quite a few of them obediently showed up to be interviewed by Sharpton. Here is a first take on the field:

• Kamala Harris: She wowed the (largely) Black audience. Sharpton noted that she came close to announcing her run but didn't quite do it. Apparently she wants to tease people for a while. Democrats are not waiting with bated breath. In fact, quite a few hope she never does it. They will be sorely disappointed.
  
  
• Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY): Apparently he was not well known before he spoke, but afterwards, some people came up to Sharpton and said: "We may be looking at another '92 with this Beshear guy." Beshear, of course, is hoping to ride that story all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It could work.
  
  
• Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA): Sharpton felt that the more Shapiro talked, the more the audience liked him. We might have another Joe Lieberman here. In 2000, Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, was a big hit with evangelicals, even though he was Jewish, because he was one of the few candidates who talked incessantly about religion. Few Democrats do that. Shapiro is another one and got a good reaction as a result.
  
  
• Pete Buttigieg: He came to Sharpton's convention in 2020 but that was problematic. Sharpton said he was more at ease this time and the crowd seemed to warm to him more this time. To be viable though, Buttigieg is going to have to get Black voters to actually vote for him, not just tolerate him. South Carolina could be his Waterloo.
  
  
• Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL): Sharpton said Pritzker was treated very politely by the crowd. This is probably a euphemism for "they didn't like him so much."
  
  
• Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA): No one sees him as presidential material, but there was interest in him on account of his pushing so hard to get the Epstein files out there.
  
  
• Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ): He came off as a folksy, everyday guy. Winning the beer test is always helpful. Also, he came early and attended a reception with the delegates, which won him some fans.
  
  
• Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD): Sharpton said he has lots of charisma and believes Moore is serious about a run. Sharpton: "I get a sense he's leaning that way."
  
  
• Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ): Many of the delegates didn't know who he was. Gallego was apparently aware of this problem in advance and did a good job of tying Trump's deportation agenda to civil rights. It was very effective.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) gave a speech instead of being interviewed. He is well known to that crowd, which is both positive (they like him) and negative (they want a fresh face) at the same time. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) couldn't make it due to a scheduling conflict. Sharpton didn't invite Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) because he doesn't think she will run. We don't either. We expect her to challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in 2028.

Sharpton asked all the candidates if they were running. No one came right out and said it, but no one denied it, either.

Some of the candidates felt that the Democrats should relentlessly focus on Donald Trump and his corruption, lawbreaking, chaos, and polarizing style. Others want to downplay Trump and focus on economic issues, like the minimum wage and inflation.

One point everyone agreed on though was hitting the Republicans on Trump's "war of choice" and the consequences it has had for most Americans. Maybe the war will be over by 2028, but talking about it now could well help in the midterms. (V)

Data Centers Are Becoming a Hot Political Issue

This will not be the year of the data center. Or maybe it will be, in a perverse sense. Millions of people are worried about what AI could do to their jobs and even more are worried about what it could do to their electricity and water bills. It is becoming a hot political issue.

Ground zero is Maine. There, the state legislature has passed a bill banning the construction of large new data centers anywhere in the state. Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) seems inclined to sign something like it, although she may insist on some minor changes. If she signs this or a related bill, Maine would be the first state to ban new data centers. Given how much voters dislike them, it probably won't be the last one.

Another state where data centers are in trouble is Virginia. There is a vast collection of Internet-related switching centers and data centers in Northern Virginia,and many people do not want the ones already there and certainly not any more. Amazon has built some within 50' of people's houses. If a company is trying to drum up opposition to its infrastructure, that is a good way to do it. A new WaPo/Schar School poll asking if people would be comfortable with a new data center in their community shows that only 35% would, while 59% would not. People see them as a scourge on the environment and a threat to electricity and water bills. In response to public outcries about data centers, Prince William County has abandoned plans to allow a 1700-acre data center park on the edge of the Manassas National Battlefield Park. It would have hosted 37 data centers. The board of supervisors had previously supported the data centers, but public outcry has made them change sides.

Viriginians now consider a data center in their community about as welcome as a nuclear reactor. A recent nationwide poll from the Marquette Law School shows that 62% of Americans say the costs of data centers outweigh their benefits.

Up until now, counties and cities have actually tried to lure data centers with tax breaks. That is changing. Now voters are against giving data centers any tax breaks at all. They employ almost no one, are ugly, and consume vast amounts of electricity and water, so why should any city or county try to lure them? They have virtually nothing to offer the locality that hosts them. We are probably not that far from reversing the situation, where cities and counties not only do not subsidize them, but put extra taxes on them to discourage their construction (or, at least, provide a reliable source of income if they do).

A group called Data Center Watch has reported that at least 25 projects were blocked or delayed around the country in 2025. There were also 238 state legislative proposals to create new rules for data centers last year. Of these, 40 passed.

To some extent, this reaction is the tech industry's own fault. It apparently didn't occur to anyone that nobody wants an ugly building with a million whirring machines consuming tens of megawatts of power next door. At the very least, tech companies should plan data centers for isolated rural areas where there is not much impact, plant trees and other camouflage around them, provide their own power sources, and pay communities for the inconvenience of being there. (V)

Virginia Is Trying to Make Us Obsolete

If you are an old-timer here, you know that this site started by collecting the state polls every day and added them up to provide a running electoral-vote score daily. Here is a link to our first posting, back on May 24, 2004. It was also intended as a way to encourage Americans overseas to register and vote.

There is an effort underway by blue states to make an end run around the Electoral College by getting states to pledge to have all their electoral votes go to the popular vote winner, no matter what the states' voters want. It is called the National Popular Vote Compact. If states with 270 electoral votes sign up, then the popular vote winner will win the election. The beauty of this scheme is that it does not require a constitutional amendment. The Compact only goes into force if states with 270 or more EVs sign up. Of course, if that happens, our raison d'être vanishes and we would have to pack up our tent and move on (or maybe we'd ask the readers).

Now we are one step closer to our nightmare scenario. Virginia has signed onto the Compact, bringing the total EVs in it to 222, based on 18 states and D.C. Republicans are against the Compact because they have traditionally been the beneficiary of the Electoral College. Now that Virginia has a Democratic trifecta, it was willing to join. Here is the map showing who is in (green), where legislation is pending (yellow) and where nothing is in progress (gray):

States where the Democrats might get the trifecta some day include Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. Together they have 59 EVs. Added to the current 222 gives 281, which is enough right now. However after the 2030 census, it will be closer. (V)

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