Should Democrats take some advice from Tom Suozzi’s win?

Democrats were relieved last Tuesday night as former representative Tom Suozzi swept to an 8-point victory in New York’s 3^rd congressional district, which now-disgraced Republican George Santos had carried by 9 points in 2022. Suozzi scored his victory against a younger and less experienced opponent, Mazi Pilip, long a registered Democrat who lacked deep roots in the local Republican party. Suozzi, who had represented the district for three terms before running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2022, enjoyed near-total name recognition, outraised Pilip by $6 million, and thrashed her in the lone debate held during the election.

Even the weather helped him. Many Democrats voted early, while most Republicans, many of whom are still suffering under the Trump-induced illusion that there’s something wrong with early voting, waited until Election Day. Then a classic nor’easter storm dumped half a foot of snow on much of the district, depressing turnout below the level that would have given Pilip a shot at winning. Many Democrats are buoyed by yet another win in spite of Biden’s bad polls.

But in the absence of exit polls, analysts can only speculate about the concerns that led the voters in the 3^rd congressional district to vote as they did. What we do know is that both candidates focused heavily on immigration, an issue on which Republicans are more trusted than Democrats. Rather than ducking the issue, as many Democrats would have been tempted to do, Suozzi addressed it head-on, calling for a bipartisan, problem-solving approach, criticizing Republicans for torpedoing the bipartisan Senate border security proposal, and—notably—calling on President Biden to shut down the southern border. Democratic operatives are hailing Suozzi’s strategy as the template for neutralizing an issue on which Republicans hold a huge advantage.

The implications of Suozzi’s victory for the 2024 presidential election are less clear, however. During the 2020 election, more than 370,000 registered voters in the 3^rd congressional district cast their ballots, compared to just 170,000 in last Tuesday’s election. Political science has shown us that working class voters and voters with lower educational achievement turn out at lower rates than college educated voters. Getting out the vote used to be a challenge for Democrats. But because today’s Democrats are largely college-educated voters, who are the most likely to vote, they tend to dominate elections with low turnouts, while Republicans, who are more dependent on working-class voters, do better in high turnout elections.

There’s another reason for caution in drawing inferences for November from the recent election: Tom Suozzi is much more popular in NY’s 3^rd CD than Joe Biden. The same poll that showed Suozzi leading Pilip by 4 percentage points, 48-44 found Donald Trump leading Biden by 5 points, 47-42, in a district that Biden carried by 8 points in 2020. Suozzi led Philp by 2 points among Independents and by 26 points among moderates. By contrast, Biden trailed Trump by 6 points among Independents and led him among moderates by just 11 points, less than half of Suozzi’s edge. Strikingly, Biden, a devout Catholic, trailed Trump by 25 points in the district’s Republican-leaning Catholic electorate compared to Pilip’s lead of 11 points over Suozzi in this crucial voting bloc.

There’s no way of knowing whether Biden could improve his standing by associating himself with Suozzi’s avowed bipartisan, problem-solving stance and by accepting Suozzi’s call to close the border, even if Congress does not pass new border legislation. But as the immigration issue rises toward the top of voters’ concerns this year, the president, who trails the former president in most national surveys and in 5 of 6 key swing states, has strong reasons to follow the trail Suozzi blazed.