10:55am With 94% in, the Dem wins by 74.9-25.1 (nearly 50 points). Harris won this district by 34 points, so that’s a 16-point increase in the Dem margin since the 2024 election, in line with the average of special elections this year.
9:33am With 37% in, the Dem is leading the Rep by 74.9-25.1. If this holds, it would be a sizeable improvement for Dems from Harris’ 2024 margin over Trump.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
Polls close at 9am AEST today for a federal special election in Virginia’s Democratic-held 11th district. This seat became vacant after the incumbent died in late May. The 3.5-month gap from the vacancy to the special election is much less time than in two other Democratic-held seats.
There is a six-month gap in Arizona (special election on September 23 after the incumbent’s death in mid-March) and an eight-month gap in Texas (special in early November after death in early March). State governors set special election dates: Virginia and Texas have Republican governors, but Arizona has a Democratic governor.
At the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump in Virginia 11 by 65.2-31.2, so it should be an easy Democrat hold. At 38 state and federal special elections so far this year, Democrats have improved by an average 15.7 points from the 2024 presidential margin in those districts. This reflects a greater tendency for Democrats to vote in low-turnout specials more than a shift in overall electorate preferences.
Republicans hold the US House of Representatives by 219-212, but wins for Democrats today and on September 23 would make it 219-214. A special election to replace a Republican who resigned in late July will be held in Tennessee in early December, a 4.5-month gap; Tennessee has a Republican governor.
Gerrymandering and national polling updates
I covered US gerrymandering in August. Since then, Texas has passed new maps that are expected to give Republicans a five-seat gain, from 25-13 Republican to 30-8. However, Democrats in California have called a November 4 referendum that will propose to return redistricting authority to the state legislature from an independent commission. Democrats expect to gain five seats, offsetting Texas and making California’s delegation 48-4 Democrat from 43-9. Polls of this referendum have “yes” to retaliatory gerrymandering way ahead.
Nate Silver said that, although Republicans hold a “trifecta” (governor and both houses of a state’s legislature) in more states than Democrats, Democratic-run states are more populous, so that Republicans hold only a 153-148 advantage over Democrats in seats that are under trifectas. If both sides aggressively gerrymander their states, it will roughly cancel out. Some Democratic states would first need to annul independent commissions that currently draw boundaries.
In Silver’s aggregate of US national polls, Trump’s net approval was -7.3 on Tuesday, with 51.7% disapproving and 44.4% approving. There has been little change in his ratings since late July. In G. Elliott Morris’ tracker of the generic congressional ballot, Democrats lead Republicans by 44.2-41.3, a nearly unchanged margin since August.
Norway, France and Canada
Norway uses proportional representation with a 4% national threshold. At Monday’s election, Labour won 53 of the 169 seats (up five since 2021), the far-right Progress 47 (up 26), the Conservatives 24 (down 12), the agrarian Centre nine (down 19), the Socialist and Red parties combined 18 (down three), the Greens eight (up five) and the Christian Democrats seven (up four).
Overall explicitly left-wing parties won 79 seats (up seven), below the 85 needed for a majority. After the 2021 election, Labour had governed in coalition with Centre and they will still need Centre’s nine seats to get to 88 seats, above the majority threshold. Centre became a member of the left alliance in 2005 after previously supporting the right.
On Monday, François Bayrou, who had been French PM since December, lost a parliamentary confidence vote by 364-194. Bayrou is from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble party. It’s the second time since the July 2024 parliamentary election that a PM has lost a confidence vote. Macron must either appoint another PM or call new elections.
Macron unnecessarily called the previous election when Ensemble had a clear lead in the previous parliament, though they were short of a majority. The result was a parliament roughly split between the left, Ensemble and the far-right. When both the left and far-right are opposed, Macron’s governments fail.
Canadian federal Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, lost his seat to the Liberals at the April general election. He has returned to parliament via an August 18 by-election in a very safe Conservative seat, winning 80.9% to 9.8% for an independent.
Thanks Adrian. On France:
“ Macron unnecessarily called the previous election when Ensemble had a clear lead in the previous parliament, though they were short of a majority. The result was a parliament roughly split between the left, Ensemble and the far-right. When both the left and far-right are opposed, Macron’s governments fail.”
It reminds me of the general pattern in Australia for double dissolutions. When governments call unnecessary elections to improve their political stocks, the voters usually resent it.
AB
What is your opinion about deep unpopularity (I mean you haven’t anything like since WW2) of European (that include UK) leaders except Switzerland PM?
Their negative approval ratings are astonishing.
Macron is the most unpopular leader in Europe with a net approval rating around -60 %
Good solid start for the Dems.
Looks like a 9% swing to them
The thing with gerrymandering is that it’s a bit of an inexact science, and there’s always a risk that going too hard will make some of your existing seats more marginal, and thus at risk if a wave for the other side. That’s obviously a bigger risk for the Republicans in this latest all-American foray into anti-democratic redistricting. So, yes, the GOP may well pick up 5 seats in Texas next year, but if the expected Blue Wave is big enough, it might end up losing all of these and more. The art of gerrymandering is to cram as many of your opponents’ voters into as few seats as possible, and so in many Republican-run states, we have a small number of Democratic seats with +30 margins. But if you try and hive some of those voters off, you end up with half a dozen seats with, say a +5 margin for the GOP (those Dem voters have to go somewhere). They will probably hold in a normal year, but they could all go to the Dems if the Blue vote is strong enough. Methinks the GOP is playing with fire here.
NYC-Mayor: New NYT/Siena College Poll Has Zohran Mamdani (D) Crushing Andrew Cuomo 46-24
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/9/2342643/-NYC-Mayor-New-NYT-Siena-College-Poll-Has-Zohran-Mamdani-D-Crushing-Andrew-Cuomo-46-24?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
The Dems are dumb in California with Gerrymandering. Their solution should be full preferential voting like Australia as it would force the game towards the centre.
I do not agree with your assessment the left wing parties won in Norway. The parties of the the Left (Labour, Centre, Socialist and Red, Green) appear to have lost a net total of 12 seats whereas the parties of the Right (Progress, Conservative, Christian Democrat, Liberal) appear to have won a net total of 13 seats although considering the Centre Party has resigned from the Govt and sat on the opposition benches it appears the result is a hung parliament with the Progress Party being the biggest winner of the election with a net gain of 26 seats to 47 seats becoming the second largest party in parliament. The left parties have won 78 seats in the 169 seat parliament and are relying on the Centre Party with 9 seats to rejoin the Govt to form a majority of 88 seats. It is unclear at this stage if this will occur. The Right parties won 81 seats. The election outcome reminds me of the Feb 2025 German election which saw the right AFD surge to become the second largest party in Germany. Opinion polling in Germany since the election indicate a continuing surge in support for AFD such that it is now vying with the right CDU/CSU party to be the most popular party in Germany. This surge to the right is a phenomena occurring across Europe (the same is happening in France) and the UK and appears to be starting to occur in Australia with the large increase in primary vote support for One Nation at the May 2025 election took and the continued surge in polling for One Nation in the polls since the election.
GR – Agree that preferential voting is indeed the best voting system, the Republicans hate it, and will never agree to it. The Dems have tried to take the high road with districting issues (where there are independent redistricting commissions, they are almost exclusively in Blue ato purple states), while the Red states have been ruthless in gaming the system. The Dems are finally waking up to the fact that they can’t take a blow up baseball bat to a gun fight – they need to fight fire with fire if they ever want to see a House majority in the near future, which is why they are now looking to gerrymander the heck out of their states.
Rob – I agree that the far Right is having a moment in Europe right now (though that has probably been the case for the last decade), but I’m less convinced that’s the case in Australia. One Nation got 6.4% of the primary vote in May, with the Trumpets getting another 2%. This has tended to be the ceiling for the far Right over the last couple of decades. While 8% of voters voting for racist loonies is a concern, under our preferential voting system, it tends to get swallowed up for no real harm resulting more broadly and they are nowhere near getting near any levers of power, let alone form or join government. Australia has no history of even flirting with the far Right or far Left, and I don’t see any clear evidence that tendency changing.
Hugosugogo – by my calculation the parties on the right (to the right of the LNP coalition) received 11.45% of the primary vote at the May 2025 election. The right parties are One Nation, Trumpet of Patriots, Family First, Libertarian Party, Gerard Rennick’s People First, Australian Christians and Shooters Fishers Farmers Party. To label all these parties and voters as racist is simply incorrect. Since the election the polls indicate One Nation’s primary vote has increased by a further 2.6% to 9.0%. In contrast the Greens primary vote has not shifted since the election and remains stuck on 12%. The trend across Australia would indicate to me that over the course of the next 12-18 months, it is highly likely the One Nation primary will increase further to exceed the Greens and may end up in a range of 15%-20% by the time of the 2028 Fed election at the expense of both the LNP Coalition and Labor Party. There is a growing anger in the Australian electorate towards the political class and elites across a range of issues and Australia appears to be following the political mood prevalent in the UK and Europe.
“To label all these parties and voters as racist is simply incorrect”
Nah. Everyone of those parties is flat out and unambiguously racist.
Ghost of Whitlam – Do you cuddle your Adolf Hitler blow up doll at night whilst reading tracts about Hitler and his dear non-aggression pact mate Stalin? You attitude to those who disagree with your point of view is straight out of the Nazi/Communist Totalitarian anti-democratic school. A disgrace.
Rob – I think you are making some rather heroic assumptions about the inexorable rise of One Nation. Early term polling is largely meaningless, and something that is rarely borne out in actual elections. Call me boring, but I prefer to rely on actual votes cast in actual elections than on the vagaries of opinion polling, which is of course dependent on assumptions that any particular pollster makes about the electorate at large.
At this year’s election, One Nation hoovered up a lot of the votes that went to Clive Palmer’s penultimate foray into politics in 2019/22, and history suggests that the far Right (and I’m not so sure that groups like the Shooters, Family First or the Libertarians necessarily are accurately labelled as the scary racist Right, which is really what we’re talking about when we are trying to talk up far Right politics) have a vote share ceiling of around 10%, while the far Left (if we are including the Greens in that group) is closer to 15%.
But that still leaves the vast majority of the voting population, some 70-odd%, in the sensible centre that defines Australian politics, and which our preferential voting system routinely funnels votes towards.
The parties of the right I mentioned all swapped preferences with each other at the May 2025 election. Apart from the Greens there is not really any other party of significant size on the left. In fact the parties to the left of Labor lost votes in May 2025. The one common trait the right parties have in common is a dislike of the Labor Party, LNP coalition, Greens and the smaller parties of the left. Kos Samaras has mentioned that his qualitative polling is indicating a significant increase in support for parties of the right with disillusionment for the 3 main established parties (Labor, LNP and Greens). Time will tell over the next couple of years how this all plays out but I see no reason for Australia to be different to Europe, UK and the USA.
Rob:
The right parties are One Nation, Trumpet of Patriots, Family First, Libertarian Party, Gerard Rennick’s People First
All racist. All fascist. Next.
Rob – there are significant differences between Australia on one hand and the UK, US and Europe on the other. First and foremost is that economically we are much firmer shape than any of those nations, and it’s economic hardship which drives most support for extremism over and above any other factor. Those other places you mention have been economically broken for at least 20 years now (longer in some regions), and it’s clear that the traditional economic model has ceased to provide for the average person. However that’s not the case in Australia: most of us are doing pretty well, despite what we might say to journalists and pollsters.
Furthermore, I’d argue that the social contract remains pretty strong in Australia compared to those other countries. The pandemic showed us that we are generally prepared to play by the rules and to be “all in in it together” much more than similar nations. We inter-marry at much higher rates than most countries, and so many of us now have a personal stake in multi-cultural Australia than might be the case in other countries. We are also geographically and demographically bunched – most of us live in the five or six biggest cities. One Nation’s heartland is really regional and rural areas, the parts of Australia that are bercoming increasingly irrelevant in the electoral matrix.
Another factor is the success of multi-culturalism itself. Australia is one of the most diverse nations on Earth, and yet we’ve managed to develop a largely socially cohesive nation. The trouble for the racist Right these days is that diversity has become a majority, or close to it, and we’re seeing the political risks in playing too obviously with race and immigration play out in real time this year, first with Dutton, and now with Price. Some of those non-Anglo voting blocks are now too significant to make enemies of.
Finally, Australia has never really flirted with extremism throughout our history. I think we see ourselves as a pragmatic, practical people (which might explain in part why the Voice referendum lost; too esoteric for the Australian imagination), and we have always been much more interested with real world practical outcomes than we have been with calls to ideological (from either the Left or Right) crusades.
All that said, Australia is not completely immune to the trends clearly developing in other nations, and even our more centrist institutions have tended to bend with the prevailing winds from time to time. But I’m confident that our political system combined with our cultural inclinations, will see us resist the more extreme manifestations. It helps that the far Right is represented in the public mind with Pauline Hanson and One Nation, widely seen as joke figures by a majority of the population, and which regularly implodes under personality rifts. The far Right may get a bit more traction if after Hanson their figurehead is younger, more charismatic, and more mainstream, but even then they still are going into run into the reality that Australia in 2025 and beyond is not necessarily a politically fertile electorate for their message.
Rob
Before the election there were polls showing PHONy on 8-9% and some confidently predicted that would be reflected on election night. It wasn’t.
Like the Greens, ON polls better between elections
Another shocking week for UK Labour in an all too growing occurrence for them. The loss of Rayner was bad but the sacking of Mandelson so soon after a public show of support is just poor judgement. I can’t stand Farage but it’s hard not too see his appeal given the shocking behaviour of the tories and now the Labour government.
Find Out Now poll from 10 September for the UK:
Reform: 34% (+2)
Labour: 19% (=)
Conservative: 15% (-2)
Lib Dems: 12% (-1)
Greens: 12% (+1)
SNP: 2% (=)
Plaid Cymru: 1% (=)
Other: 6% (+1)
Keir Starmer (Labour): 10% Approve, 67% Disapprove (-57)
Kemi Badenoch (Conservative): 8% Approve, 50% Disapprove (-42)
Nigel Farage (Reform): 38% Approve, 33% Disapprove (+5)
Ed Davey (Lib Dem): 18% Approve, 28% Disapprove (-10)
The death spiral continues.