Joe Biden and Democrats are not only hailing the special election as a validation of his agenda but taking notes on how to defeat Donald Trump in November.
Saved you a click: Shift to the right and become more moderate
The voters didn’t shift to the right, at least not in any meaningfully quantifiable sense. Souzzi won a Biden +10 district by ~+8. Less, but pretty feasibly in the noise for a low turnout special election.
That is only measuring the midpoint of the electorate vs the candidate so it doesn’t actually tell us much. Theoretically the district could have gotten 30% more conservative and the candidate was 28% more conservative than Biden so he won by a similar amount.
If that’s the lengths you’re going to go to question objective measurement, then your claim the Overton window is shifting is even more unmeasurable bullshit. And for reference, this exact candidate won in 2020 by 12. Same situation, maybe a slight drift, but pretty solidly in the noise.
Again, that doesn’t preclude the candidate and the district moving together. But the question isn’t whether it happened in this case, it’s whether it WOULD be effective to run further to the right in a district that had shifted right, which is unquestionable. That takes zero “lengths,” it’s just whether or not you think voters vote for representatives who agree with them on issues.
The voters didn’t shift to the right, at least not in any meaningfully quantifiable sense. Souzzi won a Biden +10 district by ~+8. Less, but pretty feasibly in the noise for a low turnout special election.
That is only measuring the midpoint of the electorate vs the candidate so it doesn’t actually tell us much. Theoretically the district could have gotten 30% more conservative and the candidate was 28% more conservative than Biden so he won by a similar amount.
If that’s the lengths you’re going to go to question objective measurement, then your claim the Overton window is shifting is even more unmeasurable bullshit. And for reference, this exact candidate won in 2020 by 12. Same situation, maybe a slight drift, but pretty solidly in the noise.
Again, that doesn’t preclude the candidate and the district moving together. But the question isn’t whether it happened in this case, it’s whether it WOULD be effective to run further to the right in a district that had shifted right, which is unquestionable. That takes zero “lengths,” it’s just whether or not you think voters vote for representatives who agree with them on issues.