A lot of ink has been spilled and much TV airtime has been cluttered with opinions and analysis of the PA-18 special election. Some good. Some bad. Some ridiculous and overblown. I’m not interested in rehashing or debunking all of it. Nor do I think it’s healthy to read too […] Read more »
Facing a Democratic Wave, Republicans Refuse to Throw Trump Overboard
If Republicans and President Trump are going down to defeat in November’s midterms, they are evidently going down together. … History has shown that a president’s popularity is a key factor in determining the extent of a governing party’s losses in midterm elections. Presidents almost always lose congressional seats in […] Read more »
Are Republicans in More Special Trouble?
Conor Lamb’s (D, PA-18) apparent victory in a special House election in western Pennsylvania isn’t as much of a disaster for Republicans as Sen. Doug Jones’ (D-AL) win in a special election in Alabama was in December. But both results, combined with bigger-picture factors, suggest widespread Republican weakness as the […] Read more »
The Modern History of Special Election Swing
Relative to the 2016 presidential election result there, the PA-18 special had a large swing in the Democratic direction. Looking at the two-party vote, Trump won the district by 20.3 points in 2016 while losing the national popular vote by 2.2 percentage points to Hillary Clinton, meaning the district’s lean […] Read more »
What the Pennsylvania special election tells us about the Democratic turnout surge
… Lamb’s apparent victory over Republican Rick Saccone the morning after Election Day runs in the hundreds of votes in a contest where more than 220,000 people cast ballots. In the 2016 presidential contest (according to Daily Kos’s invaluable tallies of presidential votes by legislative districts), more than 370,000 votes […] Read more »
The GOP Should Be Freaking Out, Pennsylvania Edition
Democrat Conor Lamb appears to be the winner of Tuesday’s special U.S. House election in a district that voted for President Trump by 20 percentage points. The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team discusses what the results in Pennsylvania’s 18th District mean for Republicans in the 2018 midterms. Spoiler: Not great, Bob! […] Read more »