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Where do we begin? Tuesday gave us plenty of election results worth digging into. In Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, Democrats turned in their biggest overperformance in a special House election since 2024, in the race to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene. Republicans still won, but by a margin 25 points more Democratic than the district’s baseline.
And then there was Wisconsin, where the liberal candidate for the state Supreme Court won by — checks notes — 20 points. Twenty points, in a statewide race, in the consummate swing state. There are caveats, which we’ll get into, but taken together, it’s an unnerving picture for Republicans.
Speaking of unnerving pictures, this is our first episode since President Trump threatened to kill “a whole civilization” early Tuesday and then, by day’s end, agreed to a ceasefire with Iran. We recorded this Wednesday afternoon, when a lot was still in flux, so some of the details may have changed by the time you hear this.
At the moment, even the contours of the ceasefire are murky. Is the Strait of Hormuz actually open? Is an end to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon part of the deal? Have strikes in the Gulf really stopped? And that’s before you get to the longer-term problem: the American and Iranian visions for any lasting agreement still seem fundamentally incompatible.
Politically, incompatible narratives are emerging too. The White House is claiming victory over a severely diminished Iranian military. But the regime is still in place, Iran still has its enriched uranium, and it now appears to have a say — and even a financial stake — in who passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
Also on the docket today: the election this Sunday in Hungary and a “Good Data, Bad Data or Not Data” question on polling showing Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger floundering in approval polls after winning by 15 points last fall.
With me to talk about all of it are Mary Radcliffe, head of research at FiftyPlusOne, and Lenny Bronner, senior data scientist at The Washington Post.
