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 »

Conor Lamb Chips Away at Trump’s Coalition

The Republicans’ last sea wall against a Democratic wave in November visibly cracked, but did not entirely crumble, in Tuesday’s special election for a House seat in Pennsylvania. For all of the gains Democrats have posted in elections held since Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, until this week they had […] Read more »

The ‘Enthusiasm Gap’ Could Turn A Democratic Wave Into A Tsunami

It’s a busy time of year, so we’ll keep this relatively short. But I wanted to echo and underscore a point made by FiveThirtyEight contributor Nathaniel Rakich in his article on Tuesday’s special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. One reason that the results are especially scary for Republicans — […] Read more »

Pennsylvania Special Election Recap: Good News for Democrats? Yes. 100+ Seats in Play This Year? Not Quite.

It’s always possible to overinterpret the outcome of a single special election; at the same time, even one more data point can help us make a little bit more sense of the political world around us. Here are a few things that can be gleaned from tonight’s results in Pennsylvania: […] Read more »