As former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry was sentenced to a disgraceful two years of probation for lying to the FBI (there is a different justice system for the powerful), a special election took place yesterday in his former seat in Nebraska’s first congressional district.
The Republican won 53-47, a 6-point spread.
Donald Trump won this district by 15 in 2020, 56-41, but in a weird and undemocratic decision, the special election was held with the new district lines. Those new lines are actually more Democratic, as Republicans shored up the battleground 2nd Congressional District. Had the 2020 election been run using the new maps, Trump’s 56-41 victory in the 1st would’ve been 54-43—a 4-point swing.
538’s redistricting tracker shifts Nebraska 1 from a partisan lean of Republican +21 in the old maps, to +17—the same 4-point swing. “Partisan lean is the average margin difference between how a state or district votes and how the country votes overall,” so +17 means that the district is 17 points more Republican than the rest of the nation, or solidly red. The already competitive Nebraska 2nd went from a dead-even partisan lean, to Republican +3.
So comparing Trump’s 54-43 2020 results in this newly drawn district, to last night’s 53-47 result, that’s a 5-point swing toward Democrats. This is particularly surprising because 1) special elections are low-turnout affairs for base Democratic voters, and 2) the Republican outspent the Democrats by over 10-1—$858,000 to $80,000.
In 2020, the Democratic challenger in this district, under the old lines, got 120,000 votes. That number would be higher under the new lines. Yet last night, the Democrat got 53,000 votes. It hurts knowing that Democrats could’ve handily won by simply holding more of their 2020 turnout, but as the spending numbers show, Democrats didn’t even bother trying. A R+17 district wasn’t supposed to be anywhere remotely competitive.
A +5 shift means we may have two competitive races in Nebraska next year. But if a R+17 seat is anywhere near competitive, this reverberates far beyond Nebraska. The conventional wisdom is that the party in the White House loses (many!) seats in its first midterm election of a new president. An energized opposition, plus the complacency and disappointment of the party in power (which can never deliver its campaign promises) create the condition for big shifts in power. Inflation and Joe Biden’s low approval ratings would doom Democrats in a typical year.
But as I wrote in the wake of the Supreme Court’s thermonuclear decision last week, Democrats are no longer the party in power. The Supreme Court is, and it is held by partisan Republican ideologues. There is no longer complacency among liberals, and Biden is virtually irrelevant. Republicans will be highly motivated, yes, but they won’t get to run up the score against a moribund left. You can sense it—we’re just as motivated, and the polls are picking it up.
NPR writes that [abortion decision] injects "volatility into the 2022 midterms," citing the fact that 78% of Democrats say the court's ruling makes them more likely to vote this fall—24 points higher than the number of Republicans who say the same
To be clear, this Nebraska race is a single data point, the only election conducted after the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion. But Democrats don’t have to outperform 2020 numbers by 5 points to hold the house or expand it. One or 2 points will do it. But again, if an R+17 district is competitive, we’re in far better shape than anyone could’ve reasonably hoped for just a week ago.
We can win this election.
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