Congressional Special Elections Results Thread (OLD, PLEASE UNSTICKY)

[Tartarus Sauce]

The point isn't whether the Dems will win, it's how close they can make the margins. A significantly boosted Democratic turnout in a safe Republican district like this is a result worth cataloging. The specific results of any individual special election aren't that important in terms of their relation to next year's midterm, but if the situation plays out that Democrats massively overperform in the special elections across the board compared to the 2016 general, from Georgia, to Montana, to Kansas, to South Carolina, etc., then that's a much stronger indicator that a wave could be in the making come 2018.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Estes will win, but by less than 10. Even if they're playing it safe, Republicans seem to be sweating over this a little too much if Estes was on track to cruise through by something like a 15 point margin.

[Tartarus Sauce]

I'd be careful about reading too much into the results here. Don't be too quick to assume that Democrats are headed for massive victories over the next two years if Thompson overperforms here. It's too soon to make that conclusion.

As I said before, the results of a single special don't tell us much, but a the trend of the margins across them all can be more indicative of a potential wave.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Wasn't the early vote registration counted as something like 48%-40% Republican favored? That's a MASSIVE crossover vote.

[Tartarus Sauce]

It could be that the Democrats cannibalized most of their votes through early voting, but if that's not the case, Estes could be in trouble. Again, though, these are hypotheticals. We'll know for sure soon enough.

That's the thing though, a lot of these votes are coming from Republicans based on the early vote partisan registration. That's why the numbers are so insane.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Looks like I was right on the money with a sub-10 win for Estes.

Still, this was a massive underperformance by the GOP. Estes should have been stomping all over this district by over a 20 point margin.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Well, KS-3 should be fun in 2018.

And KS-02

I'm still dubious they could pull off a win in KS-02, but under a hypothetical special like this one with a Brownback tainted candidate and sub-par Trump approvals and a strong Dem candidate, I wouldn't be surprised if they could knock it to within a 3% margin.

[Tartarus Sauce]

If Chris Mapp runs in the TX-27 special and makes the runoff, a Democrat could win.

Doesn't matter much though. The runoff is in Late September. Not much of the term is left by then, and no Democrat could carry this in the regular election in November.

The district is about as Republican as AZ-8 and Democrats came within 5 points there during a high turnout election. If they nab TX-27 during the special, it's still possible for them to hold on in November.

[Tartarus Sauce]

If Chris Mapp runs in the TX-27 special and makes the runoff, a Democrat could win.

Doesn't matter much though. The runoff is in Late September. Not much of the term is left by then, and no Democrat could carry this in the regular election in November.

The district is about as Republican as AZ-8 and Democrats came within 5 points there during a high turnout election. If they nab TX-27 during the special, it's still possible for them to hold on in November.

Perhaps in a scenario where Dems are reaching 260 seats, but I don't think the current generic ballot lead of D+7 or thereabouts suggests we're in that environment for November.

The current generic ballot lead didn’t suggest Lesko winning by a scant 5 points either, though.

If you go by the GCB, the House is basically a coinflip come Novebmer. If you go by special election trends, 260 seats is very likely undercounting the amount of seats Dems pick up. So we know the range of possibilities for November and it constitutes anything between a narrow Republican hold to a massive Democratic landslide the likes of which we haven't seen for over half-a-dozen decades. The tail end of that probability continuum that's in favor of Democrats very much encapsalutes scenarios where Democrats are winning places like TX-27, so saying they can't hold it under any situation under the regular midterm is simply incorrect.

More specifically to Wulfric's point, he's making an artificial distinction between the special and the regular midterm for this seat. Democrats have been overperforming in both high and low turnout special elections (AZ-8 was similar to midterm level turnout as was PA-18), so it's nonsensical to assert that a Democrat that managed to win the special in September is inevitably screwed in November.

Republicans should be favored to keep the seat like they were in AZ-8, but the closeness of that election showed us just how many supposedly "safe" Republican seats aren't actually as safe as people thought.

[Tartarus Sauce]

OH-12 would terrify me if I was a Republican

I'm not quite feeling it over here to be honest. There's a couple important distinctions. First off, it's likely the Republicans will get a decidedly good candidate. Not a C+ grade 1 like let's go who, as noted, has issues, but some well-established state senators and / or a County prosecutor who don't have a history of being bomb-throwing right-wingers. Likewise, while the Democrats may have a decent ish candidate in the Franklin County Recorder or a Delaware business man who is garnering a number of endorsements, they're not getting a Doug Jones,  Connor lamb, or Tipperani (sp?) Quality level candidate. Heck I don't think the candidates here are even up to the level of the candidates running the special elections in Kansas and South Carolina. I'm not sure these folks would be as bad as the Montana Congressional candidate ( assuming Franklin County's former Sheriff doesn't somehow win).

That said, there are not just a ton of candidates running for the Republican side, but a large number of viable candidates. There's at least three or four Hunan any other District would be a consensus choice for the party to nominate. With that said and the state senators and prosecutor at least being non Neanderthal level conservatives and obviously in stablished in types, there is I suppose a reasonable chance in a heavily fractured primary vote that one or two of the well funded wingnutz could worm their way through to a win. If that's the case, either of the Democrats top two candidates would have a competitive chance to win

What were Lesko's issues? She didn't appear to have anything major at all against her.

A bit of a Baum for an extremist, though in today's Roy Moore oriented GOP, she seemed like those second incarnation of Reagan by comparison.

Seriously, she wasn't the best. Or at least let's put it this way, the candidates in Ohio 12 are of a higher caliber.

While being of higher caliber certainly helps, even A-listers flop in big waves. Just because they netted good recruits doesn't mean they shouldn't be worried about losing this race.