Live Commentary
3:17pm I’ve done an article for The Conversation about Trump’s ratings and Australian polling.
2:16pm The near-final result is Rep by 53.9-45.1, an 8.8-point margin. That’s still a large swing to the Dems from Trump’s 22.3-point margin in this district in 2024.
1:47pm The Republican has been called the winner, taking Reps to a 220-213 House lead over Dems with two Dem vacancies.
1:37pm The last bit of Davidson reduces the Rep’s lead to 5.4 points with 93% in. The NYT projection is at Rep by 6.9 points.
1:24pm With 81% in, the Rep now leads by 8.0 points. The final NYT estimate is at Rep by 7.7. That’s still a 14.5-point swing to Dems from the 2024 pres results, but a clear Rep win.
12:55pm We now have two nearly complete counties: both rural. The Dems have a swing from the 2024 pres result of 9.3 points in one and 17 points in the other. With 58% in, the Rep has just retaken the lead by 0.3% and the NYT now has him winning by 5.6 points.
12:50pm As the election day vote comes in, counties appear to be becoming more Rep-leaning. The E-day vote has been better for Reps since Trump’s original election in 2016.
12:37pm The Dem takes a 7.2-point lead with results from Davidson. But the NYT still has the Rep winning by 2.9 points when everything counted.
12:24pm Still no results from three counties, including from Davidson which is expected to be heavily Dem. With 26% in, the Rep leads by 16, with the NYT estimate at Rep by 2.9.
12:15pm With 20% in, the Rep lead falls to 12.6 points and the New York Times estimate is for a final margin of 3.1 points to the Rep.
12:10pm Rural counties in TN 7 have reported so far, and the Rep leads by 71-26 with 3% in.
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 12 noon AEDT today for a federal special election in Tennessee’s Republican-held seventh district. The former member resigned in late July, so there’s a 4.5-month gap from vacancy to election. At the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump won this district by 22.3 points over Kamala Harris.
At 59 state and federal special elections held in 2025, Democrats have improved on the 2024 presidential margins by an average of 13.1 points. An Emerson poll of Tennessee 7 that was taken November 22-24 gave the Republican just a 49-47 lead over the Democrat with 4% for others.
Republicans hold the House of Representatives by 219-213 with two Democratic vacancies: the Texas 18th and New Jersey 11th. A “jungle primary” was held in Texas 18 on November 4, but nobody won over 50%, so a runoff between the two top candidates, both Democrats, will occur on January 31, nearly 11 months after the former member died. NJ 11 will hold a special election on April 16 after NJ governor-elect Mikie Sherrill resigned her House seat. Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced she will resign on January 5.
Trump’s net approval in Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls has improved two points to -13.1 from a low of -15.0 on November 23. Currently 54.5% disapprove and 41.4% approve. In Fiftyplusone’s aggregate of the generic ballot, Democrats lead Republicans by 4.3 points, a slight improvement for Democrats compared to late October.
In gerrymandering news, the Texas gerrymander that created five additional Republican seats was struck down by a federal court. Republicans have appealed this decision to the Supreme Court, which has put the lower court’s decision on hold while it deliberates. Regardless of the outcome of Texas court cases, California’s Democratic gerrymander remains in place; this was approved at a referendum by 64.4-35.6 (28.8 points).
In final results from other November 4 elections, Democrats won the Virginia governorship by 15.4 points, the attorney-general by 6.6 and lieutenant-governor by 11.6. They won the lower house by 64-36. In NJ, Democrats won the governorship by 14.4 points and the lower house by 57-23. In 2024, Harris won NJ by 5.9 points, Virginia by 5.8 and California by 20.1.
Canadian Liberals barely win budget vote
The centre-left Canadian Liberals hold 170 of the 343 House of Commons seats (up one since the April election owing to a defection from the Conservatives), the Conservatives 143, the separatist Quebec Bloc 22, the left-wing NDP seven and the Greens one. The Liberals are just short of the 172 needed for a majority.
On November 17, the Liberals won a budget vote by 170 to 168 with only the sole Green supporting among non-Liberal parties. The budget was saved by the absence of two NDP and two Conservative MPs. The Liberal Speaker can only vote to break ties. Had the budget vote been lost, a new election would have been required.
Also in Canada, there was a provincial election in Newfoundland and Labrador on October 14. The Conservatives gained government with 21 of the 40 seats (up eight since the 2021 election). The Liberals won 15 seats (down seven) and the NDP two (steady). Vote shares were 44.4% Conservatives (up 5.6%), 43.4% Liberals (down 4.8%) and 8.3% NDP (up 0.3%). All Canadian elections use first past the post.
Right-winger likely to win Chile presidential election
Presidential and legislative elections occurred in Chile on November 16. Left-wing incumbent Gabriel Boric was unable to run owing to term limits. Communist Jeannette Jara, who served in Boric’s administration, won 26.9%, with right-winger José Antonio Kast following with 23.9%. Jara and Kast will proceed to a December 14 runoff. The other candidates were mostly right-wing and polls give Kast a large lead, so Kast should win.
All of the 155 lower house seats were elected by proportional representation in multi-member electorates. Right-wing parties won a combined 76 seats (up five since 2021), two short of a majority. Left-wing parties won 64 seats (down 15), with the populist Party of the People winning 14 seats (up eight). In the Senate, 23 of the 50 seats were up by multi-member PR. Left-wing parties won these seats by 12-11 for an overall 25-25 tie.
The way things are shifting society wide I’ll put my neck out and predict a flip to the Democrats.
The Tennesse race is going to be close, and will scare the Republican side, even if they manage to hold onto the seat.
They have thrown so much money on this, despite never having to do this.
It could be the catalyst for MAGA to end…….
[‘Talk to just about any Democratic strategist these days and you’ll get more than a little happy talk. Sure, they view the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as an unmitigated disaster, but on the bright side, his standing with voters is lower than ever. Even his Republican base is exhausted by his chaos-laden lurch from grievance to gulag and back.
Talk to Republicans and they can hardly argue with those facts. Even in getting their way during this fall’s history-making government shutdown, the GOP still bore more of the blame in voters’ eyes. Republicans know they’re in a rut and there’s no point denying it.
That’s why today’s special election in deep-red Tennessee has both parties watching more closely than is typical for a race where Black Friday shoppers would typically outpace balloting. The lone independent poll of the Nashville-area district found Republican Matt Van Epps ahead by 2 points in a district Trump carried by 22 just a little more than a year ago. That helps to explain why Speaker Mike Johnson started his week on the ground there, and why Trump himself picked up Johnson’s cell and spoke to a rally via speaker phone.
“The whole world is watching Tennessee right now, and they’re watching your district,” Trump said Monday. The result on Tuesday “has got to show that the Republican Party is stronger than it’s ever been,” the President said.
Democrats see this race as an opportunity not necessarily to win but to at least jam Trump by shrinking Van Epps margin of victory to single digits. They recently went on the air in the district with $1 million in new ads—a change from other special elections this year and a signal that the House race in Trump country is more competitive than it should be. State Rep. Aftyn Behn is running stronger than expected for the seat vacated when Rep. Mark Green quit Congress for a job in the private sector. Van Epps, an Army veteran who flew helicopters and served as a state commissioner, too is getting help from outside groups hoping to salvage the race.
The race may shape more than who represents the Tennessee 7th District. Johnson is operating with razor-thin margins that may soon get worse. As balloting began Tuesday, Republicans enjoyed a 219-213 majority in the House. Come next month, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, fed up with Washington’s toxic politics, plans to head home to Georgia a year before her term ends. Upcoming special elections in Texas and Virginia are primed to give Democrats plausibly easy victories, and Greene’s race could get dicey for Republicans. In fact, it’s not impossible to see Republicans coming within one vote of losing the majority sometime in 2025. (And that’s before you remember that 24 House Republicans have already announced that they will not be seeking re-election next year.)
To be sure, Democrats are aware they’re still talking about Tennessee. Privately, they’re passing around internal polling that shows them between 7 and 10 points down—losing but maybe possibly within striking distance of a potential upset if lightning strikes.
Trump won that district with 67% of the vote last year, while Green won with 60%. Republicans have a built-in voter registration of about 10 points. None of those figures, however, stopped Kamala Harris from making a stop in the district last month to boost Behn or Democrats working hard to nationalize the race, much as they did this spring with a winning state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin.’] DC Brief.
Democrats might actually have a notional majority in the house now after the Texas map was struct down, so like the South Australian election of 2018, the sitting government (Republicans in the house) need a swing TO THEM to hold the chamber. Of course there are other states that could gerrymander but that also includes New York and Virginia.
I am not defending any of this, I think Democrats need to grow the hell up.
@Victoria – this won’t be the catalyst for the Republican establishment to reassert itself over MAGA.
The old style republicans will need a generation to rebuild, if they ever can.
What might happen, if the Democrats win, is that the MAGA might split.
Currently, MAGA is a broad church of three main factions
MAGA isolationalists, who want to stop being the world police, stop globalism, and go back to their idealised 1920s USA.
Grifters. People who get advanced notice from Trump about who to short, ahead of his torpedoing sections of the economy.
MRGA folk, who want to see Russia conquer the entire world, starting with Ukraine.
90% of those who identify as MAGA are in the MAGA faction. The 10% with all the power and influence are MRGA and Grifters. The MAGA folk are starting to realise they’ve been conned by the other two factions.
Voice Endeavour
MAGA is already splitting. And yes they are finally waking up to fact they have been conned
Looks like the Democrats will just come up short at the moment unfortunately.
Still though, looks like a 7-8% swing to them, a lot of other Republican seats will flip if that’s how things go in the midterms next year.
Kirsdarke
Difference now over 8110 in favour of Repug after 63.9% counted.
Unfortunately, you could be right.
I am disappointed with Tennessee people.
They are ready to bear any pain and corruption by Trump to support Trump.
Now the difference between Repug and Dem is 7.8% after 64.5% counted. Shame on you Tennessee.
No need to despair, Ven. Tennessee-7 was won by Trump 60-38 so it was always going to be a long shot, it’s as safe for them as Moncrieff or Hume is for the Liberals here.
If the swing is this big next year nation-wide then the Democrats would flip over 50 seats elsewhere.
As per MSNow
Repug is projected to win. It is over and done with.
The difference between Repug and Dem is 8% after 75.1% counted.
A uniform 14- 15% swing against the Republican Party in the 2026 mid-terms would put quite a few gerrymandered Republican districts in danger
Despite all the cute songs from Nashville, Tennessee is a poorer than average US State. It scores below average among US states for education, health, environment and median income. In short, Tennessee is prime MAGA country. If Trump can’t win here, he will have trouble elsewhere.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/tennessee
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/release/tables?eid=257197&rid=110
Ven –
Tennessee is… Tennessee.
As per Steve Kornacki of NBC, the Repug did much better than expected in the rich suburbs just below the Nashville i.e. rich suburbs voters woke up on election day and voted overwhelmingly in favour of Repug because Dem candidate won pre-election day vote quite well.
Well, it’s the high water mark in TN apparently. They’ll need to work on that state over years if they want to be clawing back any ground.
Still, 6.9 is a convincing win but not compared to 22 in 2024. It’d be seen as a disaster if the media hadn’t been whipping up people’s hopes so unrealistically. Remember that pundits were saying a 6 point win in NJ would be a disaster for Dems; now a 6.9 in ruby red TN is a walloping? Media narratives.
A 22 point swing in just a year is almost unheard of. Don’t be surprised it didn’t happen.
If we assume that Democrats flip every seat that’s R+9 or greater in November 2026, then that would flip a whopping 75 seats, making the House about 290-145 to the Democrats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
That scenario would probably be too good to be true, so maybe safer to assume 50 seats flip. They only need to flip 4 to win the House.
The Senate would be harder, the Democrats have to defend everything they hold currently and flip 4 seats from the Republicans. North Carolina looks like it’s a win, though from there it gets tough. There’s a bitter primary battle in Maine, Ohio looks like it’s staying red and Alaska’s a long shot too. They’d have to win all four of them or otherwise take even longer shots for Texas and Florida.
MAGA needs to calm down and face reality. They somehow think this is a big win. If this was replicated it could easily cost Republicans 5 senate seats, and 50 house seats if turnout is high in the key areas, At this rate GOP will fail to retake Kentucky and Kansas governorships which would be historically bad since they haven’t elected Democrats for 3 terms for decades.
The fact that Democrats held on in 2022 and 2023 proves that Biden was popular and a good president. He was the most popular president since JFK. And any attacks on Biden is deluded.
Sorry that should be R+9 or less.
Also on Canadian politics, it’s probably lucky for the opposition that the budget passed. Carney’s Liberal government appears to still be in a honeymoon period and could win a majority outright if an election was forced this early.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_46th_Canadian_federal_election
Liberals leading in most of the main polls, Carney the clear favourite as Preferred Prime Minister, government approval at about net +10%.
Kirsdarke, and had it not been for that PC mp who defected to the Libs likely for political gain, the budget likely would have been defeated especially if the 2 that abstained did not
But they would be really stupid to force an early election, that would be Tasmania 2.0. Carney should just prologue parliament with permission from the governor general.
Just curious, who would the Canadian Liberals equivalent be in Australia? The NDP is clearly equivalent to Labor/UK Labour as they were all built on the labour movement and are traditionally socialist.
Would the Menzies/Turnbull Liberalism be a good comparison to them? But even then I would consider them moderate/red tories rather than Liberals. As the Canadian Liberal party has been left-of centre whereas Menzies was clearly right-of centre.
Canada politically sits slightly to the left of Australia, at least in terms of who governs. Although Canada’s “progressive” governments are less so than Australian progressive governments.
@Daniel T
I think I’d put the Canadian Liberals as a mix of the Labor Right and Liberal Moderates/Teals. The New Democrats meanwhile would be the Labor Left/roughly half of the Greens.
Honestly it’s a bit hard to say since I don’t know much about the history of trade unions in Canada and how they relate to their politics like they do in Australia.
That said, I think the Canadian Liberals stubbornly sticking to First Past The Post voting is foolish. If they introduce preferential/ranked-choice voting then they’ll not only have a superior electoral system but be much more robust from the Conservatives trying to bring MAGA north of the border, since polling consistently says that if such a system was in place, many NDP and Green voters would preference the Liberals above the Conservatives instead of just being spoilers.
Sure it’d make things awkward in provinces like Quebec where there’s many 4 or even 5-cornered contests where the Liberals win a narrow plurality, but it’ll work out well for them in the long term.
Well, this is grim for the Democrats in Michigan.
https://mirs-polls.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/c7ba70f28c3812c553cbf07db509f469.pdf
Republicans ahead for the Senate and Governor.
Kirsdarke, It’s only 1 poll and it’s unlikely to end up happening, especially the senate seat, If Trumps approvals and generic ballot are anything to believe.
Governor is possible due to the former democrat mayor splitting the vote as an Independent. But the same thing happened in Oregon in 2022 yet the Democrat won despite the vote split.
I’d rate Republicans chances higher of flipping the Wisconsin governors race than Michigan
Daniel T @ #26 Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025 – 9:02 pm
That as it may be, it shouldn’t even be this close. These are incumbent Democratic positions, even if both are retiring.
Michigan was an almighty fuck up for the Democrats in 2024 and they were lucky to even have Elissa Slotkin win her seat, she only held it by 48.6-48.3. That the Republicans are ahead after 10 months of Trump’s circus of “Oh god what the fuck is this?! We haven’t had this since fucking Caligula!” is outrageous.
It was always a bridge too far and by getting too excited about it, Democrats turned an actual good result into a loss.
The Canadian opposition was not lucky the budget passed, the Conservatives made sure of it. Some of their number began as if they were abstaining but voted nay when it was apparent it would go through.
Canadian parties have less ideological substance than equivalents in other countries. The leader shapes the party to a much greater degree than here. The Liberals are a broad (working) middle class party, but Mark Carney gets described as Progressive Conservative while Justin Trudeau innovated a more sharply progressive period that minimised the difference with the NDP.
Justin Trudeau tried to switch away from FPTP to preferential voting, but it was so widely canned that he just couldn’t. The general feeling is that preferential voting would create a system of perpetual Liberal government because they’re the centrist party – so it isn’t just Green and NDP voters who would give a preference to the Liberals, but also Conservative voters in seats that could be won by the Liberals or the NDP. We’re witnessing something a bit like that now in Australia, where preferences seem to run to Labor whether from Teals or Greens, or Liberals in Green/Labor seats. Most people in Australia recognise the fact that politicians have agency, and someone who wants to win simply needs to appeal to enough voters, and so the landscape can shift and change. But when deciding electoral rules, that kind of fact doesn’t matter – you have to pick rules that can be widely supported.
Canada could of course consider switching to a list system or MMP, but I don’t think it’s likely; their system is relatively stable and well understood by the politicians so it would seem like an unnecessary risk to the leadership. It’s more likely that the UK will adopt a preferential system if the polling for Labor remains dire and the polling for Reform remains strong. If the UK adopts preferential voting, I think it will create a period of one or two electoral cycles where change becomes more likely in Australia and Canada.
Maybe Canada should consider their French heritage and look at a two round system.
Interesting post, Felix. Thanks for that insight.
Maybe a French style 2-round system would be more fitting for Canada?
Maybe a French style 2-round system would be more fitting for Canada?
What would that have achieved?
In the last election assuming the current candidates, first round would leave Carney and Pollievre, and exclude NDP – which was obvious and was also the predicted outcome under any other system, preferential, proportional or FPTP.
The second round would have been won by Carney, with NDP and BQ votes, which is what happened anyway.
Some of the FPTP systems are being effectively tactically voted by left leaning voters, diminishing the diffrerence between them and other systems.
Even in Australia, where I was just biitching on the other thread, Littleproud got his Maranoa with such a high margin even with the opportunity for voters to use their preferences to block him.
And proportional would still put someone like him in Parliament just with the crazies and rurals alone voting for him, no matter how unimpressive and unpopular he is with the rest of the Australian electorate.
I would think a more convincing argument for 2 rounds would be if 3 or more candidates were in the 20-30% range of the ‘primary’ vote and therefore some of the lower ones needed excluding.
Corleone, in this years election, Carney and Poilievre didn’t run against each other. It’s unlikely the prime minister’s office would have been claimed by Poilievre or anyone else on a different system, but that’s hardly the only thing that matters.
On the other hand, there were a variety of ridings around in which vote passed from the NDP to the Liberals, and the Conservatives ended up winning them. Under a two round system, the Conservatives might still have won those seats, or maybe the NDP would have retained them or the Liberals would have gained them.
In any case, the chief benefit for Canadians to adopting a two round system is that they might actually be able to adopt it. It would probably also help strengthen the hand of local candidates and MPs against the party leaders because the local fit component of the competition would be amplified in those close ridings which go to the second round. But it’s harder to say whether that would be a good outcome per se – their geographical politics are already a great problem.
So Felix, you are suggesting a multi-round system for ridings?
Could anyone seriously be bothered with this? Voting more than once in an expensive process so that the first round is only there to simply exclude some nobodies from parties that could never win.
You would be familiar with the activist group who tried to load up Pollievre’s new seat with hundreds of dummy candidates to make the bar harder for him to cross – a first round might eliminate that but still leave the substantive question of who to represent the riding unresolved. But if he was the clear favourite in his Alberta riding, then what does it matter whether it is by FPTP?
In other words, the “French” system for me is strictly for the headline act ie the PM, President or whatever. Or some sort of party vote where voters are saying in the multi round which party(s) they want.
At riding level, our preferential system makes the most sense, you are asking for the also-rans to be excluded by the voters but at the same time as asking them who they DO want, and then the tactics for parties become like ours – making an appeal first to your own voters for their 1st prefs, then to anyone else who might be convinced to give you a preference above someone else.
I think maintaining geographic representation in Canada is important, there confederation is looser and representing the turf is seen as important. Thus I don’t think any form of proportional is going to work.
But if that is not achievable, then they should stick to FPTP but have the left parties get better at working their tactics, and not allowing personalities to get in the way of the hard bargaining that must take place to ensure the candidate representing the voters most accurately is the one selected.
Tennessee bird walk?
I was indeed suggesting that perhaps their parliament should be elected by a two round system like they have in France. The French at least can be bothered with it, and I would ask you not to redefine terms simply based on whether you like reality or not. Aside from the fact that IRV was not possible for Canada to adopt, a French style two round system has the advantage that candidates stand down: if three or four beat the threshold, then there is a negotiation within blocks and someone often stands down. Anyway as I said upthread, the Canadian parties understand their electoral system well and I don’t think they’re likely to change; I just think this proposal might be possible.
In France the 2nd round (where required) occurs 2 weeks after the first.
But there is zero out of district voting and zero mail-in voting (unless IiRC you’re in prison).
Proxy voting is possible but requires some administrative hoops to obtain.
Polling day is the only day you can vote on – there is no early voting.
I don’t think Canadians (or Australians for that matter) would give up the ability to vote out of district or by mail willingly to get a slightly more proportional system.