There shouldn’t be much doubt that the Democrats are riding a wave heading into November’s midterm elections. That was clear well before Conor Lamb’s apparent victory in Pennsylvania last week. There have been nearly 100 special elections over the last year, and at this point there’s so much evidence of […] 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 »
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 »
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 »
Maybe Election Polls Aren’t Broken After All
NO MATTER WHERE you situate yourself on the political spectrum, don’t try to deny that the 2016 US presidential election made you go “whaaaaaaat?” This isn’t a judgment; if you believe Michael Wolff’s book, even Donald Trump didn’t think Donald Trump was going to be president. Partially that’s because of […] Read more »