Viewing Congressional special elections as referendums

The first of the five special elections to the House that resulted from sitting members of the House taking positions within the administration of the Liar-in-Chief was in the 4th Congressional District in Kansas.  Mike Pompeo had been elected to represent that district four times before leaving his seat to become Director of the CIA.

Pompeo had won reelection in November of 2016 with 60.7% of the vote.  The Democrat candidate opposing him received only 29.6% of the vote.

Kansas voter registration records show that among the district's population, registration at the time of the special election was:

Republican - 186,650
Democrat - 95,788
Unaffiliated - 140,376
Libertarian - 3,605

In the special election the Republican candidate, Ron Estes won.  He tallied 52.5% of the votes.  His Democrat challenger racked up 45.7% of the votes.  A much closer result.  Also worth noting is that only 28.9% of registered voters participated.  Then there is the fact that a Republican has held the 4th Congressional district seat in Kansas without interruption since 1995.

This was the first special election after the inauguration of the Cheeto-in-Chief.  In comparison to the money spent on the most recent special election in Georgia, the outside spending in this race was almost negligible.  The loser, James Thompson spent $146,000 of the $253,000 that was contributed to his campaign.  Mr. Estes spent $202,000 of the $312,000 given to his campaign.  Two outside Republican organization, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Congressional Leadership Fund spent nearly $200,000 more. 

Add this all up and we find that an underfunded candidate, outspent nearly 3 to 1, lost by less than 8,200 votes.

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The race to fill the single seat in the House of Representatives for Montana got a lot of publicity just before the election because of this.

That is audio of a confrontation between then-GOP candidate Greg Gianforte and Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian where the candidate "body-slammed" the reporter.  Mr. Gianforte apologized for the incident in his acceptance speech after his win in the special election.  He also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge.

The race was between Mr. Gianforte and two challengers.  Democrat Rob Quist and Libertarian Mark Wicks.  Spending in support of Mr. Gianforte from outside sources was around $7 million, which is about $4 million more than was spend on behalf of Mr. Quist.

In the election Mr. Gianforte got just under 50% of the vote.  The at-large seat in Montana has been in Republican hands since 1997.  The prior representative, Ryan Zinke had tallied more than 55% of the votes in the two elections prior to this special election.  Trump defeated Clinton by a margin of 56.5% to 36.0% in last November's election.

Data from 2014 Gallup polling shows that voter registration in Montana was split in favor of Republicans by a 51% - 33% split. 

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The results of the Georgia special election are well known and don't bear reiteration.  But did you know there was another special election held on the same day, to replace Mick Mulvaney in South Carolina's 5th Congressional district?

Mr. Mulvaney resigned to take on the job of Director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Liar-in-Chief's administration. 

Republican Ralph Norman defeated Democrat Archie Parnell by a margin of 51.1% to 47.9%.  That is a much closer result than the margins of victory for Mr. Mulvaney in the two prior elections.  He got over 60% in 2014 and nearly the same percentage of the vote in 2016.

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Were these elections referendums on the Trump administration?  The Democratic Party leadership tried and failed to turn one of them into a referendum.  The other three were mostly local races with some outside spending involved. 

In all four elections, the margin of victory was much smaller than that of the Republican who resigned to serve the Cheeto-in-Chief, and smaller than Trump's margin of victory in that district last November.

Why did the Democrats fail to gain ground?  It is easy to blame the leadership of the party, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi but that is not the only cause.  How many men and women who took the time to register as Democrats failed to get to the polls for the election?  How many men and women failed to even register to vote?

Why was so much money spent in Georgia and so little in South Carolina?

Were these four Republican wins for Donald Trump?  I do not believe so.  To use a tennis analogy, the Republicans merely held serve.  These districts were in their hands and still remain in their hands.  Yet their margins of victory were smaller. 

The lesson here is that the Republican majority is in fact vulnerable.  The House can be re-taken by the Democrats next November.  But only if the party comes together, fixes its problems at the top and finds a way to energize its constituency to get out and vote.

The voters who stayed home last November will do it again if they are not brought into the fold.