The Progressive Midwesterner

Here's a couple of interesting points of analysis about the elections in North Dakota earlier this month, which included a whopping 13 (!!!) statewide elections in North Dakota this year (two federal legislative elections, six state executive elections, one state supreme court election, and four state referenda). First, soon-to-be-former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (DNPL-ND) got a similar percentage of the vote in her unsuccessful U.S. Senate re-election bid this year to the percentage of the vote that she received in her unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2000. Here's a set of maps, courtesy of J. Miles Coleman of Decision Desk HQ, comparing the 2018 U.S. Senate election in North Dakota to the 2000 gubernatorial election in North Dakota: The #NDSen result this year was very similar to 2000, when Heitkamp ran for Governor. She lost to John Hoeven by 10% then. Most of her gains in 2018 were around Fargo & in American Indian counties. The western region, however, has gotten...

Yesterday, I created this spreadsheet containing a county-by-county analysis of the 2018 early vote in North Dakota, as of October 20. Early voting participation in North Dakota has been high: some North Dakota counties have already seen numbers of received early vote ballots that are more than one-quarter of the total number of overall votes cast in the 2012 U.S. Senate election in North Dakota. Here are some important notes regarding the analysis of the North Dakota early vote so far: As of this writing, no votes have been actually counted for any candidates in North Dakota in the 2018 elections; vote totals for specific candidates are not reported until after the Election Day polls close. Unlike every other U.S. state, North Dakota lacks voter registration, so there aren't official early voting statistics based on party registration and/or race like some, but not all, other states provide. The North Dakota Secretary of State's office maintains a drop-down list of earl...

While Chicago-area progressives can claim multiple victories from Tuesday's Democratic primary in Illinois (including Chuy Garcia's victory in the 4th Congressional District primary and Fritz Kaegi's victory in the Cook County Assessor primary), progressives suffered a disappointing defeat in the 3rd Congressional District Democratic primary, as Dan Lipinski, the incumbent machine Democrat who is strongly opposed to women's reproductive rights, defeated progressive challenger Marie Newman by an approximately 2.4% margin. Lipinski is almost completely certain to win re-election in the November general election, as the Republican nominee who is running against Lipinski is Arthur Jones, a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi who won the Republican nomination with no opposition in the Republican primary. The 3rd Congressional District of Illinois includes southwestern and central portions of Cook County, a very small section of southeastern DuPage County, and northern portions of Will ...