Live Commentary
11:17am Thursday Wikipedia says quick counts gave Prabowa between 53.4% and 59.8%. In the official count, with 39% reporting, Prabowa has 56.0%. The legislative count is far less advanced than the presidential count.
7:44pm Al Jazeera reports that quick counts from all polls have Prabowa leading with 58% to 61% with 26% to 35% of votes counted. So Prabowa will be the next Indonesian president, winning a first round majority.
6:13pm From Al Jazeera, election law prevents publication of “quick counts” before 8am GMT (7pm AEDT). So we should get some quick count results, which have been accurate in the past, after that time.
5:31pm This is the Al Jazeera live results blog.
5:10pm All polls have now closed in Indonesia. Al Jazeera has a live blog, but no results so far. Preliminary results are expected to be released this evening.
4:11pm With 93% in, Suozzi’s margin drops slightly to 53.9-46.1. Biden won this district by 8.2% in 2020, so there’s virtually no swing from the Biden 2020 margin. The big swing is from Santos’ 53.8-46.2 win in 2022.
3:50pm Recycling this paragraph from the Intro for those getting carried away by the special election results: Democrats have been successful at state and federal by-elections (called “special” elections in the US) since the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, overturning Roe vs Wade in June 2022. But New York Times analyst Nate Cohn says turnout at these by-elections is much lower than it will be at the general election this November. Voters who show up at by-elections are far more motivated by abortion than the general electorate.
2:57pm With 84% in overall, Suozzi leads by 54.2-45.8. 83% now counted in Nassau, and Suozzi is down to a 53-47 lead there. These latest results make the polls look more accurate.
2:35pm More results from Nassau (70% counted there now) reduce Suozzi’s overall lead to 55-45.
2:28pm It will actually be a 219-213 Rep House majority owing to a Dem’s resignation on Feb 2. There are special elections to come between late April and June to replace the two Reps and the Dem who have resigned.
2:07pm Race CALLED for Suozzi, and that’s a Dem gain, reducing the Rep House majority to 219-214. Should have put link to results in earlier.
2:04pm 45% of Nassau now in, and Suozzi leads there by 58-42 and overall by 59-41. Looks very good for Suozzi.
1:31pm Suozzi leads by 63-37 in Queens with 86% in and 51-49 in Nassau with 2% in. The large majority of this district is in Nassau, but counting is slow there.
1:16pm With 9% in, Suozzi (Dem) leads Pilip (Rep) by 63-37. However, the NYC borough of Queens has 60% counted already, with Suozzi up there by 63-37. There are few votes so far in the regional county of Nassau.
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, and his own website is here.
Polls close at 1pm AEDT today for a US federal by-election in New York’s third congressional district. I wrote in January that this seat was formerly held by Republican George Santos before he was expelled from the House of Representatives on December 1.
Santos had gained from the Democrats at the 2022 midterm elections, winning by a 53.8-46.2 margin. Joe Biden had won this seat against Donald Trump at the 2020 presidential election by an 8.2% margin.
The by-election candidates are Democrat Tom Suozzi and Republican Mazi Melesa Pilip. A mid-January Emerson College poll gave Suozzi a 45-42 lead over Pilip. Two early February polls from Emerson and Siena gave Suozzi three-to-four-point leads.
Republicans won the House in 2022 by a 222-213 margin, but there are currently three vacancies in Republican-held seats including this one. A Democratic win in this by-election would reduce the Republican House majority to 219-214.
Democrats have been successful at state and federal by-elections (called “special” elections in the US) since the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, overturning Roe vs Wade in June 2022. But New York Times analyst Nate Cohn says turnout at these by-elections is much lower than it will be at the general election this November. Voters who show up at by-elections are far more motivated by abortion than the general electorate.
On February 8, Biden gave a press conference in response to a special counsel’s report on classified documents that had been found at his home. The line in the report that was most damaging to Biden described him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.
Most national polls have Trump leading Biden by single-digit margins for the general election. The US Electoral Vote system is likely to advantage Trump over national polls. Biden’s net approval in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate is -16.9, while Trump’s net favourability is -9.3.
Polls will close at 9am AEDT Friday for by-elections in two UK Conservative-held seats. I will have more on these by-elections in a separate post, and also more on recent international elections.
Updates on the presidential primaries
Republican presidential candidates in Nevada had to choose to contest either the February 6 primary or the February 8 caucus, which allocated all of Nevada’s delegates. Trump contested the caucus, while Nikki Haley contested the primary.
Nevada has a “none of these candidates” option on its ballot papers. In the primary, “none of these candidates” crushed Haley by 63–30. Trump won 99% in the Nevada caucus, where he was effectively unopposed. Trump leads Haley nationally by 76-18 in the FiveThirtyEight aggregate and by 65-32 in Haley’s home state of South Carolina, which holds its Republican primary February 24.
Biden won the February 3 South Carolina Democratic primary with 96% and the February 6 Nevada Democratic primary with 89%, and will easily win the Democratic presidential nomination.
Prabowo likely to win Indonesian election
I covered the presidential and legislative elections in Indonesia in January. If no presidential candidate wins a majority, there will be a June 26 runoff. The 580 lower house seats are elected by proportional representation in multi-member electorates with a 4% national threshold. Senatorial candidates cannot be members of a political party. Four senators are elected per province for a total of 152.
Indonesia spans three time zones, with polls closing between 3pm and 5pm AEDT today. This Al Jazeera article says a preliminary result is likely to be announced this evening, but the final results could take 35 days.
The latest polls all give Prabowa Subianto over 50%, so it’s likely that he wins outright today. Prabowa is the candidate of a religious and right-wing alliance who lost to incumbent president Joko Widodo in both the 2014 and 2019 elections. Gibran Rakabuming, the eldest child of Joko, is Prabowo’s running mate. The other two candidates are Ganjar Pranowo, who represents the secularist PDI-P (Joko’s party) and independent Anies Baswedan, the former governor of Jakarta.