RealClear Politics GOP's Special Election Wins Counter Media Spin https://www.realclearpolitics.com/a..._election_wins_counter_media_spin_137760.html The media narrative from Tuesday night's special election in Ohio's 12th Congressional District is that even a loss is good news for Democrats. What's been under-reported is that Republicans won the vast majority of the 11 special elections for U.S. House and Senate seats held since the 2016 election. One of the races, in California’s 34th Congressional District, was won by a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Democratic district. In the remaining 10 special elections, where Republicans were defending seats, eight were won by Republicans. The media narrative is that Democrats’ “success” in making some of these races close has broader implications for the November midterms. Not so. Only in Alabama, where Doug Jones beat flawed candidate Roy Moore, and in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, where Conor Lamb beat Rick Saccone, can Democrats claim true victories. Special elections are a minority party's dream come true. They are all about turnout, which poses a challenge given that they are held at off-cycle times, and involve open seats. Incumbents usually have enormous advantages of money, name identification and organization. However, since the 2016 election, the advantage was negated in five of the 11 special elections. These were held to replace Cabinet appointees in the Trump administration, all of whom had strong support in their home states and districts: Jeff Sessions, Mick Mulvaney, Tom Price, Mike Pompeo and Ryan Zinke. Another factor in the closeness of some of the 11 special elections stems from the typically low turnout, which gives third-party candidates more influence. In the PA-18 race, for example, Lamb’s surprise victory was partially due to a right-of-center Libertarian candidate who got 1,379 votes -- a potentially pivotal number since Saccone lost by just 627 votes. In Tuesday’s OH-12 election, Green Party candidate Joe Manchik drew 1,127 votes, a total that may have prevented the mandatory recount for Democrat Danny O'Connor, who trails Troy Balderson by fewer than 2,000 votes. The numbers tell a different story than the one proffered by many in the media. Spotlighting them supplies a valuable counterweight, which President Trump himself provided Wednesday. In a tweet, he said that “Republicans have now won 8 out of 9 House Seats, yet if you listen to the Fake News Media you would think we are being clobbered.”
Yup - the spin was Blue Wave...it failed and will again in November https://media4.s-nbcnews.com/j/news...fc87551fc88c75f673c6ae3de0db29dd.fit-760w.jpg
A Republican barely winning by less than a point in an R+11 district is great news for Republicans! Really it is! That's the official party spin! If that 10 point shift holds, the Dems easily take the house and senate.
With a Republican POTUS in the WH? That's always a disadvantage, and we still won. Keep that chin up.
Excellent. You're trying to convince your fellow Republicans not to be terrified of being such losers, but you can't even manage to convince yourself. I suggest stockpiling a great deal of liquor for the this November. Otherwise, I don't see how you get through it.
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the last 10 years of voting Democrats out of every public office high and low.
Neat....Republicans actually won an election even with Trump. You folks got it made so don't even worry about November….might as well stay home and party.
C'mon guys. A week is a long time in politics. In July 101 years ago in Russia, the Bolsheviks were practically outlawed, in prison, Lenin had fled to Finland ... they were blamed for a chaotic unorganized 'uprising' against the government -- the 'July Days' -- and supposedly evidence had been found that Lenin was in German pay, provoking a strong popular reaction against them. By November they were in power. What had happened? As Harold MacMillan probably didn't say but is credited with saying in response to a question about what Prime Ministers most feared, "Events, dear boy, events." No one knows what events will occur between now and November.
You mean one like all the rest of these elections have shown? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/special-elections-so-far-point-to-a-democratic-wave-in-2018/
Not a 10 point shift by any stretch of the imagination. No incumbent and no socialist agenda from the "D" in the race. The Dems simply can't find enough Connor Lamb clones...
The results were R+1. The 2016 Congressional election in OH-12 was R+36, so that would indicate a 35 point shift. However, incumbency helps a lot, so I thought it more accurate to compare to the presidential election result of R+11, to call it a 10 point shift. And to get that, Republicans had to outspend Democrats 4 to 1. And it was a low-turnout special election, which always favors Republicans. And there's a regular Green candidate in that district siphoning votes from Democrats, without any corresponding right-wing third-party candidates to siphon votes from Republicans. The reason Republicans win most of the special elections is that congressmen pulled into the Trump admin are deliberately drawn from supposedly safe R districts. It's very misleading for the OP to have left that fact out. The fact that Republicans have to fight desperately to win such ruby red districts, and even occasionally lose them, that's a looming disaster for Republicans.
