As of 11:45 p.m., 97 percent of the expected vote is reporting in New York’s 3rd District, and Suozzi is leading Pilip 54 percent to 46 percent. Although that margin will probably narrow by a couple of points when all is said and done, it’s clear that Suozzi has scored a big win for Democrats that will have big implications both on Long Island and in Washington, D.C.

Rather than stay up for every last ballot to be counted (often a fool’s errand in New York), we’re calling it a night here on the ol’ live blog. Thanks so much for joining us, and we hope to see you back here for the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday (😱), Feb. 24!

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

While Suozzi looks to be en route to a 6-to-7 point victory, it's pretty clear he won among an electorate that had an unfavorable view of Biden: 57 percent of likely voters had an unfavorable view of the president in a Siena College/Newsday survey of the special election, but Suozzi led by 4 points, not too different from his actual win. And revealingly, nearly one-fourth of Suozzi's supporters had an unfavorable view of Biden. Now, Suozzi has a long-established political profile on Long Island that likely won over some voters displeased with Biden. But at the same time, this suggests that Biden — despite his 38 percent approval rating — might still be able to win over some of the voters who are frustrated with the status quo, especially in a "choice" election between him and Trump.

I say this because we saw something like this in the 2022 midterm elections, when the exit poll found that Democrats narrowly won among those who somewhat disapproved of Biden's job performance. This was a notable shift from the 2010 and 2014 midterms, when those who somewhat disapproved of Barack Obama backed Republicans by some distance. Right now, Biden is running about even or even slightly behind Trump in the polls, so a major question will be whether some voters who are unhappy with Biden but voted for Democrats in recent elections might still go for him by the time we get to November.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538

In terms of what factors might actually externalize out of NY-03 tonight, I'd pick the durable appeal of the ideological moderate as a likely one. This is not the place to rehash the social science evidence for the benefits of ideological moderation in general elections, but note that Suozzi ran to the right of most Democrats on issues such as immigration and crime. These are issues that are particularly important to New Yorkers right now, but also relevant in other swing districts.

Abstracting from that, one piece of "News Analysis" ( scare quotes intentional) is that much of the coverage of Joe Biden's potentially weakness versus Donald Trump in November has revolved around the president's weakness with lefty young voters over the situation in Israel-Gaza since October. And while that may end up proving consequential, an easier prediction is that Biden will suffer more if he is seen as a liberal ideologue.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

Despite what looks to be a relatively comfortable win for Democrats tonight, our entire conversation tonight only emphasizes how closely the country is divided on partisan lines.

As Nathaniel said, Republicans have a razor thin majority in the House, and Democrats will be fighting to keep their majority in the Senate this fall. It's early, but we expect the presidential election to be close. Whatever happens in any individual race, politics in the country remains deeply divided. We'll keep seeing more evidence of that the closer we get to November.

—Monica Potts, 538

This special election has national implications not only because it could affect the narrow margin in the House of Representatives. Special election results overall can be predictive of the next regularly scheduled election. But you can’t just look at who wins and who loses; you have to look at which party does better than the baseline partisanship of its district. As I’ve written, there’s a pretty reliable correlation between a party’s average overperformance in special elections and the House popular vote margin in the next election.

According to a weighted average of the 2016 and 2020 presidential election results in the district, New York’s 3rd District is 3 percentage points bluer than the nation as a whole. That means a Suozzi win in the double or high single digits would be a bullish sign for Democrats, and a Pilip win would be a bullish sign for Republicans.

Of course, one special election can’t tell you much of anything. Local factors — such as, in this case, the ghost of Santos — can make them unrepresentative of the national mood. So you’d be wise to throw tonight’s overperformance into an average with all the other special election results from this cycle before drawing any broader conclusions.

Entering tonight, Democrats had overperformed by an average of 7 points in congressional and state legislative special elections since the beginning of 2023. If history is any guide, that’s a sign that Democrats will have a strong 2024 election. On the other hand, The New York Times’s Nate Cohn has convincingly written that special-election electorates are fundamentally different from — and more Democratic than — the electorate that will go to the polls this November.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538