Hello everyone, my name is Frank Driscoll and welcome to Driscoll's election dissection, your election analysis for Across the Circus. I hope you're all doing well today wherever you are. So on our last show we looked at the congressional race for New York's third congressional district, the special election, and the results came in and former representative Tom Swazi won his old job back. Yes, Swazi won. It was a tight race. He won both counties in terms of votes, but it was still pretty close.
He won with about 53.7% compared to Mazie Pilip's 46-ish percent. And Mazie Pilip has not announced that she will be running in the general election primary this year later on, but she has expressed interest in it. So we might be seeing a rematch here, which could tip the scales again. You never know. So Tuesday, March the 5th is Super Tuesday, a known date on the presidential nominating calendar. So numerous states will be holding both Republican and Democratic primaries.
Some states are doing one or the other. This is according to 2702win.com. Alaska is holding its Republican caucus and Iowa is holding its Democratic caucus, although Republicans already did that earlier in the month, and a caucus as well in American Samoa on the Democratic side. But many states are holding both Republican primaries and Democratic primaries on that date.
Those states being Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia. All those states are holding a presidential nominating primary, and we could see this as the potential last straw for both candidates Nikki Haley and Dean Phillips in their challenges to President Joe Biden for Dean Phillips and former President Trump for Nikki Haley. But we'll see.
Anything can happen, although it seems very likely what will. However, despite that, there are five states on that list that are also holding their primary elections for their congressional and statewide seats. Those five states being Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas. So we're going to do a quick roundup of those five states and what's going on there on the primary ballot. So Arkansas, not much going on there.
No Senate election, no governor election, just the four congressional seats they have and all four incumbents are running for reelection. Only one of them is facing a primary challenger, but even then there's not many polls on that, which means it's kind of not much of a competitive race. So apologies to our friends in Arkansas. We're sorry you won't be having anything competitive on the ballot this March. Also Texas is not really much else going on there.
There are a few retirements in Congress and there are a few congressional seats that are on the lean side of the Cook voting index, but nothing really of a toss up. Senate primary is worth a look, although it seems to be very evident that Colin Allred, representative, incumbent representative, will be winning the Democratic primary and facing off against Senator Ted Cruz in November. That race is worth a look.
Ted Cruz has the advantage, but you know, a lot could happen between March and November. North Carolina is known to be a very swingy state, if you will. They usually tip the scales very often. They have an incumbent governor who's Democrat, Roy Cooper. He is term limited though, so he can't run for reelection this year. The Democratic primary and Republican primary have major frontrunners who seem very likely to win their respective primaries.
The general election in November will be worth a look. The primaries, not so much. Alabama is, there's something interesting going on in Alabama actually that I like to share. In Alabama, their state congressional map had to be redrawn as the Supreme Court believed that it violated the Voting Rights Act. So as a result, their second congressional district is now a minority majority district.
And as a result, many Democrats are filing for that seat as they have a chance to have another Democratic representative in the state. Meanwhile, the current district two congressman Barry Moore knows that it will be a tough reelection ahead, so he's decided not to run for his old seat, but instead is challenging incumbent representative Jerry Carle in the first congressional seat.
And it's kind of rare to see two congressional incumbents facing off in a primary election that's not a year right after a census. So that's something that's worth a look. Well, we all know according to the Cook PVI, whoever wins that primary will win in November. But our main focus today involves probably one of the most battleground elections coming up and it's one of the most competitive elections that this state has had in about 30 years.
We're heading to the Golden State, the state of California, also my home state. So there is an open seat for the US Senate. So Diane Feinstein held on to this seat for nearly 30 years. And in February of 2023, she announced that she would not be running for reelection. As a result, many people came into the race. Sadly, in September, Senator Feinstein passed away and Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Labor President Lafonza Butler to the seat.
And she announced just a few days after her appointment that she would not run for reelection. She intends to, I guess, keep the seat warm until a new senator is elected, if you will. So California has an open primary, a top two primary, if you will. That means all of the candidates appear on the ballot. All of them, Republicans, Democrats, independents, third parties, whatever. They all appear on one ballot and the voter votes for one person.
And you're probably thinking, oh, so it's like Louisiana, where if there's a majority that person wins, if not, then the two candidates with the most move on to the general, right? Wrong. You see, in a top two primary, it's different from a Louisiana primary because even if the top vote getter gets a majority, then the two vote getters still face off in a general election in November.
Some say that's kind of unfair because a candidate already wins a majority and could potentially lose the general election. But you know, it's up to the states to decide that. At least every voter gets to vote in the primary, you know. Some many states don't do that. So there are four major candidates in this race. Three of them are Democrats and they're all members of the U.S. House of Representatives, those being Adam Schiff, Katie Porter, and Barbara Lee.
Meanwhile, there is a Republican candidate throughout the mix, former baseball player Steve Garvey. So those four have the most name recognition and it's very likely that two of those people will be the two candidates in November. And recent polls have showed that it's actually a pretty close race for the second spot. So this is the most recent poll. It's from Emerson College and Adam Schiff is shown with a 28% lead.
Steve Garvey has 22% and Katie Porter has 16%, a Barbara Lee with 9%, rounding it out. Now there is a margin of error of 3.1 points, which isn't that much in this second place field. A poll just a couple weeks before that from the University of Southern California and Dornsife showed Schiff leading with 25% instead of 28% and Porter and Garvey literally neck and neck with 15%. So this does pose to be somewhat of a close race because, you know, both Porter and Garvey of course want that spot.
But you know, it does pose a bit of an interesting couple of dilemmas. For one thing, it could leave Garvey out completely and there'll be two Democratic candidates on the final ballot. You know, I'm sure he doesn't want that. On the other hand, Katie Porter thinks she can take on Adam Schiff and wants Garvey out. But the Garvey campaign seems to be taking advantage of this as they have been going full frontal on attack ads against Katie Porter.
Many of them have been seen on California television throughout the last couple of weeks, as well as hate ads for Steve Garvey. So it's a very bitter campaign. But despite that, this is a solid Democratic race, according to many race indexes. Well, I mean, it's California we're talking about here. And Adam Schiff seems to have the advantage leading in the polls.
But you know, it would be probably harder for him to face another Democrat in Katie Porter and probably easy enough to face Steve Garvey in the general. It does seem to be very important election here in California, because whoever wins this election could go on to something. They could hang on to the seat for a while, just like Dianne Feinstein did holding the seat for nearly 30 years, or possibly moving up to something else.
As we all know, another former Senator Kamala Harris is now currently the vice president of the United States. So there's major implications about possibly the future of US politics on the line here. So it's an interesting race to look at. And as always, I would like to point out if you are a registered voter in Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, Texas, or the other states that we mentioned earlier with presidential contests, I do not care who you vote for.
But I do care that you vote. So please do. Thank you for listening to Driscoll's election dissection. If you'd like to learn more about the show, go online to algidproductions.com slash Across the Circus and be sure to listen to us on any podcasting forum you like. Thank you all for listening, and I'll see you all very soon. "Driscoll's Election Dissection" was brought to you by Algid Productions LLC. Thank you for listening!