There have been only three special elections in districts where Hillary Clinton did 10 or more points better than Barack Obama in 2012. (Clinton did 9 points better in Oklahoma’s 46th State House District, and boy did the Democrat outperform in the special election there. But a pre-determined cutoff is a pre-determined cutoff.) However, we don’t see the numbers back at the 2012 margin in any of them. With only three districts to go by, it certainly wouldn’t be a surprise if we eventually saw another district like this that did jump back to 2012 levels—but it obviously isn’t a universal behavior.
Looking at all the special elections this year so far, the trends are obvious. Democrats are, on average, outperforming both Clinton and Obama.
Here’s a graph that compares the results of all special elections this cycle to Clinton’s performance in those same districts. Points above the diagonal line show where Democratic margins have been better than the 2016 presidential results:
Almost every circle is above the line. That is a lovely bunch of massive Democratic overperformance!
Now, here’s the comparison to 2012 numbers. It looks similar:
This is very, very different from what we’ve seen in recent years. Here’s every special election from 2013 through 2016 compared to Obama’s 2012 margin, for instance:
The vast majority of circles in this case are below the diagonal line, meaning the Democrat did worse than Obama. So 2017 is therefore a completely different political environment compared to what we’ve experienced the last few cycles.
What, exactly, is the significance of this? We’ll look into that in more depth soon, but for now we’ll leave you with this: There are 35 House seats that either Clinton or Obama won that are currently held by Republicans. And there are another 63 that either Clinton or Obama lost by fewer than 10 points.
Republicans currently hold a 24-seat majority in the House. You do the math.
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