DE State Senate: On Saturday, Democrats scored a critical win in a hotly contested special election for the Delaware state Senate, allowing them to maintain control of the chamber and, with it, the state's government. Democrat Stephanie Hansen, an attorney and former president of the New Castle County Council, handily defeated Republican realtor John Marino by a 58-41 margin, but the result was no foregone conclusion.
In 2014, Marino nearly unseated the prior occupant of this seat, Bethany Hall-Long, losing just 51-49. And the stakes were high: Hall-Long won election as lieutenant governor last year, leaving the Senate with a 10-10 deadlock between the parties. Long had been able to break ties in her role as lieutenant governor, but had Republicans prevailed on Saturday, they'd have taken control of the Senate for the first time since the 1970s. And even more importantly, it would have given them veto power over the agenda of Delaware's Democrats, who control both the state House and governorship.
That crisis was averted, and in fine fashion. Remarkably, turnout for this race—a Saturday race in February—was higher than it was during the regularly scheduled midterms in 2014: 12,580 votes were cast this weekend versus 12,193 three years ago. That's something you almost never see in a special election. And the energy was heavily weighted toward the Democratic side: Hansen took 7,314 votes, versus 6,230 for Hall-Long last time.
In addition, Hansen outran Hillary Clinton's own 2016 performance. Clinton carried this seat 54-41, a net of 13 points. Hansen, though, won by 17 points, meaning she ran 4 points ahead of the top of the ticket. That might not sound like much, but it's actually enormous. In elections when there's no presidential race on the ballot, turnout among Democratic voters almost always tends to drop disproportionately. Indeed, a rigorous study by analyst Sean Trende of 170 races that took place in 2013 found that, on average, Democrats performed an average of 12 points worse than Barack Obama had just a year earlier. That means we'd ordinarily expect a seat Clinton carried by 13 to essentially be a tossup in a special election. In this case, we got a blowout.
And while it's still very early, Saturday's result appears to fit in with a new trend we've seen ever since Election Day. Nationwide, there have been six legislative special elections so far pitting a Democrat versus a Republican. In five of them, the Democrat has performed better than Clinton's margin. In three of them, Democrats have even done better than Barack Obama, and even when they haven't, the differential has been far less than the typical 12-point dropoff indicated by Trende's analysis. It's very possible that an intense "Trump effect" is at play here, driving Democrats to the polls when in the past some had been less inclined to show up.
However, as analyst Nathaniel Rakich has noted, all of these races have taken place in districts where Clinton did worse than Obama—seats where you might expect a reversion to past trends. The real test will come in places where Clinton exceeded Obama's performance. Will Democrats be able to showcase their sky-high levels of enthusiasm in areas like that? We'll soon have an excellent test, in the upcoming special election in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, a traditionally conservative seat where Donald Trump cratered compared to Mitt Romney. The primary there is April 18, with a runoff on June 20, so stay tuned—and stay involved.