DDHQ Morning News Spotlight: Election Day continues in PA/OR, Plus 2022 Panic Begins to Set-In for House Democrats

Welcome to this morning’s Decision Desk HQ Morning News Spotlight on Elections Daily as part of the Decision Desk HQ News Network.

Morning Headlines

• Results continue to trickle in from Tuesday’s Election Day in five states. Defective barcodes on ballots in Clackamas County have caused about two-thirds of ballots in Oregon’s third-most populous county to need to be hand-counted, while the outcomes of two close Pennsylvania congressional races could potentially hinge on 33 final precincts of Election Day votes in Allegheny County.
• All eyes are on the PA GOP Senate Primary, where the Trump-endorsed television star Mehmet Oz is clinging to a 1,241 vote cushion at the time of publication. Oz’s lead peaked at 2,564 votes, but businessman David McCormick has cut the lead by more than half thanks to his advantage in mail-in ballots. With roughly 20,000 ballots yet to be counted, including the Election Day votes in McCormick’s Allegheny County stronghold, the race is still anyone’s game. Either way, the race will be heavily litigated and is well within recount territory.
• Two progressive challengers appear to be well on their way to intense Democratic Primary victories in OR-05 and PA-12. Jamie McLeod-Skinner currently holds a much cozier 8,000 vote margin over incumbent Blue Dog Democrat and Biden-endorsed Kurt Schrader, but an estimated ~50,000 votes in Schrader’s stronghold of Clackamas County are still outstanding. Progressive Summer Lee is clinging to a 446 vote lead over AIPAC-backed Steve Irwin in the Allegheny County-based PA-12 Democratic primary. With only 31 precincts outstanding, Lee seems likely to win the race, but Irwin still can hold onto a glimmer of hope.
• A Democratic-appointed Majority on the Kansas State Supreme Court chose to uphold Republicans’ slight gerrymander of the state’s congressional maps for 2022-2030. FiveThirtyEight gives the map an efficiency rating of R+5.7, slightly favoring Republicans. The map splits Kansas’ Democratic base in Wyandotte County, moving KS-03 Representative Sharice Davids into a Biden+5 seat, which Elections Daily rates as a tossup for 2022. The seat trended about eleven points to the left between the 2016 and 2020 Presidential Elections and could be safely blue by the end of the decade.
• After DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney chose to run for re-election in a slightly more blue-leaning district (moving from an open Biden+5 to a double-bunked Biden+8), he has found himself at the center of major controversy. Freshman Representative Mondaire Jones has not backed down, which could lead to a nasty and expensive primary in the new NY-17. Given Jones currently represents roughly 75% of NY-17, many other Democrats have publically and privately jumped to his defense, raising questions about Maloney’s long-term place as a leader in the caucus.
• Maloney’s move signifies the frantic nature of House Democrats’ situation, with DCCC polling showing the party down 8 points in battleground districts. While Democrats are clinging to a narrow majority in the House, members are bracing for losing over 20 seats in the chamber, including some on a traditionally safe Democratic turf.

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