On Tuesday night, Republican Ron Estes beat Democrat James Thompson in a cliffhanger special election in a Kansas congressional district that should never have been remotely close in the first place. Estes won by a 53-46 margin, a difference of just 7 points. By contrast, back in November, Donald Trump carried this same seat, Kansas’ 4th District, by a whopping 60-33 spread—a margin of 27 points.
That means Estes trailed Trump by 20 percent, which is pitiful. But how does that stack up against the rest of the Republican caucus? Well, Daily Kos Elections’ own Daniel Donner literally created a stack so that you can see! Take a peek at it below.
Each gray horizontal bar represents a Republican member of the House. Those to the right of the vertical line performed better than Trump; those to the left, worse. As you can see, almost all House Republicans ran ahead of Trump, but a handful did not.
And way down at the very bottom is Ron Estes. In fact, just one of his fellow Republicans ranks below him: Alabama Rep. Martha Roby, who failed to offer full-throated support for Trump and earned a challenge from a write-in candidate disgusted by her refusal to pay fealty to The Donald, thus eating into her share of the vote on the right. Estes had no similar excuse.
It’s pretty hard to run this far behind Trump and actually win. The only reason Estes could is because his district was so red to begin with—in other words, he had a big fat cushion, and he used almost all of it. But for districts that aren’t quite that same dark shade of crimson? Republicans who turn in an Estes-like performance will soon find themselves looking for other work.
