More informative than a poll of 2024...

Today's elections in New Jersey and Virginia may be more predictive - and will build on some of the fairest maps in the nation.

Many observers of politics focused on yesterday’s poll for the presidential race. I am not going to link to it, because such a poll is not predictive of an event one year away.

However, there is an indicator that may do a better job of foreshadowing 2024: real legislative elections. These have a pretty good track record, and many such elections are happening today across the nation.

Of particular interest are New Jersey and Virginia elections. Not only might these elections provide information about next year’s voting trends, but thanks to redistricting, they will also produce outcomes that reflect the overall wishes of voters in those states.

New Jersey and Virginia are among the few states that hold legislative elections in odd-numbered years. This year, because of redistricting, every legislative seat is up in both states, and in both chambers. Thanks to balanced and representative maps, the candidates will be running on a level playing field. 

In both states, the maps were drawn through mechanisms that bypass legislatures, which tend to serve themselves and not voters. Instead, the final maps were drawn by a commission and a court. They are among the fairest in the nation by objective measures.

In New Jersey, redistricting was controlled by a commission equally divided between Democratic and Republican political appointees, plus one court-appointed tiebreaker. Although citizens had little say, the tiebreaking commissioner, retired judge Philip Carchman, did set forth standards for fairness and good districting. He acted as mediator between the parties to produce a bipartisan consensus map. (Disclosure: I served as a technical expert to the tiebreaker.) The enacted plan has the quality of being majoritarian: if more New Jerseyans vote for Democrats, the Assembly and Senate will likely go Democratic. And if they prefer Republicans, then Republicans will likely control the chambers. That’s a simple indicator of partisan balance.

The Virginia map turned out the same way, but by a more circuitous route. In that case the commission was composed of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, and was equally divided between citizens and legislators. However, despite a promising start to deliberations, the legislators ended up derailing the process. The commission deadlocked, throwing the task to the Virginia Supreme Court. The Court in turn appointed two special masters to prepare plans that used public input and complied with fairness standards. (Disclosure: one special master, Prof. Bernard Grofman, is an academic collaborator and frequent visitor to the Electoral Innovation Lab in Princeton.) 

Based on objective metrics, the special masters did a good job. The metrics were developed by the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, a project of the Electoral Innovation Lab. PGP calculated metrics based on computer simulations of what a party-blind process would do; calculations of how votes ought to be translated into seats, again in a party-blind manner; and measures of competition, racial representation, and compactness. PGP then translated the metrics into grades using a uniform system that it applied in all 50 states. Congressional grades have been featured in the Washington Post.

Here are PGP report cards for the Virginia General Assembly:

As you can see, the grades are quite good. They are representative of what independent commissions typically accomplish.

Because the New Jersey and Virginia maps are relatively balanced, the pivotal districts for determining control have a partisan makeup that is similar to the state as a whole. In the Virginia Senate, those are Senate Districts 16, 17, 22, and 31. If Democrats and Republicans win two districts each, Virginia might in all likelihood end up with a 20-20 Senate. On average, these four districts voted 56.1% D/41.9% R for Biden/Trump in President 2020, and 50.3% D/48.9% R for McAuliffe/Youngkin in Governor 2021.

The Senate districts: 

What will happen? On the one hand, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is currently popular. He is advocating for local control of schools, which is also popular. So the swing districts might go Republicans’ way. On the other hand, he also advocates state-level legislation to restrict abortion, which is not popular. So the swing districts might go Democrats’ way. Whichever is the case, the outcome will determine whether the Virginia General Assembly next year will support Youngkin’s preferred policies.

(Indeed, another election to watch is the abortion-rights initiative on the ballot today in Ohio. That measure, Issue 1, will measure how far ahead abortion rights runs relative to general support for the Democratic Party. Ohio typically votes 45% Democratic. Issue 1 is likely to win a substantially larger vote share, which gives a sense of why Democrats want to emphasize this issue in a post-Roe world.)

Meanwhile, In the Virginia House of Delegates, the middle four districts are House Districts 58, 65, 82, and 97. These are a similar story as the Virginia Senate: whoever wins three of them will likely control the House of Delegates. For both the Virginia House of Delegates and the Senate, the key races are being tracked at the New York Times and VPAP.org.

In New Jersey, where one map is used to elect both Assembly and Senate, the middle four are Districts 14, 16, 36, and 38, averaging 57.7% D, 40.9% R for President 2020 (see map here).. District 16 includes Princeton and District 14 is next door.

In addition to determining what policies citizens of New Jersey and Virginia can expect in 2024-2025, these elections are also a possible harbinger of the 2024 national election. Off-year elections are a fairly good predictor of the next year’s Congressional election, as documented by DailyKos Elections. So the over/underperformance of Democrats and Republicans today compared with 2020 is likely to be at least as informative about Biden-vs.-Trump 2024 than that opinion poll I mentioned.