Tuesday night, Democrats won two legislative special elections in Trump territory, flipping the seats from Republican control. The results were stunning and dramatic. In the case of New York’s 9th Assembly District, the margin shifted an astounding 39 points from last year’s presidential election!
Less noticed were two special elections the same night where party control did not change hands. Yet these, too, are part of the story. In both cases, the margin shifted just around 1 point worse compared to Hillary Clinton’s margin.
What difference does that make? Not much, until we look at the big picture.
Let’s travel back in time a bit. In December 2015, Democrat Tonya Anderson lost a special election for the 43rd District in Georgia’s state Senate by a painfully slim 84-vote margin. Here at Daily Kos Elections, we reported that “the special election gods taketh away.”
On the other hand, just last week, Democrats lost another special election for a Georgia state Senate seat, this time by a much larger 14 percentage points. But what was our headline? Republicans “shouldn’t be pleased.”
What?
Why the difference in interpretation? Anderson was expected to win with ease. The seat was overwhelmingly Democratic; Barack Obama had won it by a whopping 44 points in 2012. Indeed, in a 2016 rematch, Anderson won the seat with a massive 70-30 advantage. What happened in 2015? Nobody really knows, but our best guess was Democrats just didn’t bother to show up.
Last week’s election, on the other hand, came in a district Obama lost by a gigantic 36-point margin, while Clinton lost it by 14 points. In previous years, we might have expected a Democrat to lose a special election by a massive amount, very likely worse than Clinton and probably even worse than Obama. But instead, the margin was the same as Clinton’s and much better than Obama’s.
Democrats are showing up—and in a way they haven’t in years. Below, we’ll show you just what’s going on.
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