On March 20, Louisiana held two special elections to fill vacancies in the U.S. House. See the results here.
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Massachusetts holds a special election to fill a vacancy in the State House on March 30. The vacancy is for the Suffolk 19th district seat. There are three candidates on the ballot, a Democrat, a Republican, and an independent, Richard Fucillo.
At the Democratic primary on March 2, four Democrats ran. The winner, Jeffrey Turco, received 36.2% of the Democratic primary vote. His victory in the primary was considered a surprise, because he voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and he and/or his wife donated to Republican U.S. Senate canddiates Lindsay Graham and Susan Collins in 2020. Consequently, many Democrats will not vote for him in the special general election.
The independent candidate is 22 years old and is a college student. Here is an article about him.
The outcome of the Democratic primary has lead to renewed calls for ranked choice voting, even though Massachusetts voters defeated the RCV initiative last November.
The district is overwhelmingly Democratic, and in November 2020 the only candidate on the ballot was a Democrat.
Ever since 2003, Gallup Polls has been asking whether respondents favor a new major political party. The latest poll shows 62% say “Yes”, which is higher than ever before, although it was almost as high in September 2017. For the first time, a majority of self-identified Republicans favor the concept. See the details here. Thanks to Political Wire for the link. The poll was conducted January 21-February 2.
On March 19, the Maine Libertarian Party filed this brief in its ballot access lawsuit. It is 17 pages.
According to this story, the U.S. Census Bureau now says it can furnish 2020 population data to state agencies that are responsible for redistricting by mid-August, instead of at the end of September. However the data won’t be in a convenient format.