One might describe Arizona’s 8th Congressional District as … nondescript. … Nor was there anything especially unusual about the candidates who competed in the special election there on Tuesday — Republican Debbie Lesko, a state senator, and Democrat Hiral Tipirneni, a doctor.
And although the Republican, Lesko, is the apparent winner, the election represents another really bad data point for the GOP. Lesko’s margin of victory was only 5 percentage points in a district that typically votes Republican by much, much more than that. The outcome represented a 20-point swing toward Democrats relative to the district’s FiveThirtyEight partisan lean, which is derived from how it voted for president in 2016 and 2012 relative to the country. CONT.
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight