In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the central characters have created a finite improbability machine — a device for doing things that could occur naturally but only on rare occasions.  By definition, the finitely improbable do sometimes occur — e.g., a number 16 seed winning in the first round of the NCAA basketball — because, however the deck may be stacked against the event happening, there is series of events that can come together to make the improbable happen.

In politics, the first of the events needed for a party to win an election is for it to have a candidate file to run.  This past week, the Democratic Party narrowly won (subject to a canvass that should not change the results and the Republicans in the House simply opting to ignore the results) a special election in Pennsylvania’s Eighteenth District.  While, given the change in conditions since 2014 and 2016, it is unlikely that a Democratic candidate would have won in those two elections, the Democrats did not have any chance because no Democrat filed.

In most states, the filing period for offices occurs in the spring of an election year.   (Green Papers has a good list of the filing deadline and the primary dates for most states.)  At this point, the filing deadline (at least for the established parties) has passed in about half of the states.  So far, the Democrats are doing a good job at finding candidates to run for Congress.  In the states in which the filing deadline has passed, Democrats have filed for every seat other than North Carolina’s Third District.  While it is harder to tell for sure in states in which filing has opened (as candidates can still withdraw), it appears that Democrats have candidates for most if not all congressional seats in those states — the only district that does not have an announced Democratic candidate is Pennsylvania’s Thirteenth District.  (Some of the upcoming states require nominating petitions.  While it looks like there are Democrats circulating petitions, it is impossible to tell if we will have a candidate until the petition is filed which may occur just before the deadline.  There is also the complicating issue in Pennsylvania of the new Congressional district lines.  The Republicans have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the implementation of the new lines.  However, the U.S. Supreme Court has had the stay application for over two weeks — and pleadings closed on March 6.  It becomes less likely — and it was already unlikely — that the U.S. Supreme Court will grant the stay once filing closes on Tuesday as such a change would disrupt the primary schedule.) Continue Reading...