So tonight sucked. It looks like Ossoff did worse than in April and will end up about 5 points in the hole. BUT… there is an upside.
Yes, a loss is a loss, but there were 3 relevant races tonight (plus a seat in the SC house which has not been historically contested), and all outperformed historical expectations. I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet of all competitive races and tonights results showed a Drumpf effect of:
- GA-06: D+7.5
- SC-05: D+16.5
- SC-State House 48: D+24.8
That’s a big deal. Among special elections, the median Drumpf effect (increase in Dem margin compared to 2016 estimates) is 14.1%, with a weighted mean (by votes) of 12.6%.
That’s the good news. A swing at that level in 2018 is more than enough to win the House.
The bad news is that we seem to do worse when the Republicans are actually paying attention. They were paying attention in GA; they weren’t in SC.
On the other hand, we will be strongly motivated to run people in every district. MT, KS, SC taught us that. We need and will have a 435 district, 50 state strategy.