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U.S. House Win in Arizona for the (R)
So Republican Debbie Lesko has won a special election for Arizona’s 8th congressional district over Dem. Hiral Tipirneni.
Lesko, a former state lawmaker, will head to Washington to replace Franks, who resigned his seat in December midway through his eighth term over sexual-misconduct allegations. She will complete his term, which expires in January, and run for a full two-year term of her own in the fall elections.
Meanwhile, Democrats will point to an unbroken string of nine special federal elections now in which they have improved over their 2016 showing. That performance has the party looking ahead to the November elections with an eye toward regaining control of one or both chambers of Congress.
To do that, they still need to win a net 23 seats in the House after falling short in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.
Moments after winning, Lesko gave an emotional talk to supporters at the home of a neighbor who hosted her victory party.
“It’s very surreal,” she said. “Twenty-five years ago, I left an abusive husband. And I sure as heck, never would have dreamt in a million years that I would be running for Congress, be a congresswoman.”
I thought that the Elephants would never win again and we were facing a never-ending onslaught of Blue Wave. The Mainstream Media is talking about the narrow margin of victory for Lesko and why it portends disaster for the party of Donald Trump in the fall. But just maybe, maybe, that won’t be the case.
Published in General
So … the democrat base is highly motivated. And they have had a massive media marketing onslaught to get out the vote and give the middle finger to President Trump by showing him the “Blue Wave” in as many special elections as possible before November, 2018. And thus, the media narrative is that this is a referendum on President Trump and even a Republican win is really a loss.
@garyrobbins … what happened here? Do you have polling information regarding the voting population in this special election versus the election for POTUS in 2016? Do you think that the same voter turnout will be present in the standard general election in November, 2018? Or might it be more like the one that came out in November, 2016?
Thank you for any insights you are able to provide from Arizona.
In anticipation, I did a little digging. There are 455,660 registered voters in Arizona District 8. 174,513 voted in this special election … only 38%.
In November, 2016, there were 298,971 votes cast in Arizona 8. I expect a lot of these missing 124,000+ voters will show up this November.
Yes, the democrat (and never ever) voting base is enraged and thus highly motivated. I suggest that the GOP get their base motivated as well, and turn out the vote like they did in November 2016 for November 2018. And like Congresswoman Debbie Lasko … you win when you support the policies of the President.
So the narrative will evolve to the size of her win. Trump won by 20+ points in this district in 2016. Lesko only won by 4…thus the Republican win becomes a Democrat win. Voila.
So how close was it? If I recall this was a very Republican district. Dems have in other elections narroed the gap considerably in such districts or races even winning a few. The thing to wonder is if this hold true in less Republican districts where a 5 point swing to the Dems will put them over the top. There are plenty of districts held by Republicans where Hillary won to flip the house.
So yah Republicans need to turn out their base, they also probably need Trump to not keep doing things that might motivate fence sitters and independents that he really needs to be checked by a Democratic Congress. He should probably go on vacation for like 6 months. It always helped Obama.
Thanks @valiuth for making my point.
I think the republicans need to go hard against leftist agitation. The reason republicans have any power at all is because the left scared the normals. Republicans need to remind the normals about how scary the left is.
Sally Kohn (or was it rachel maddow) worrying about death camps on MSNBC should be on TV all the time.
Don’t let the left skate on naked racism either, make their racism as unacceptable as the alt-right’s. Straight up ask them on the sunday news shows, what exactly is it that makes them different from the alt-right given they believe all the same things just about different races.
Violence, vandalism, and riots should be on a continuous commercial loop. (queue scary music, is this what you want for your neighborhood, dun dun dun)
Nixon won a landslide because of leftist violence and agitation and a desire to return to normalcy.
Gun control is a good way to get out the vote as well.
Remind them the only people known to have colluded with the Russians is Mark Warner and Hillary Clinton….
But all of this requires the mainstream of the right to not be worthless and to play the game to win for a change.
Republicans got congress because the left started messing with too much stuff, and trump is president because of omnipresent and continuous extreme leftist agitation online and IRL.
The conservative project has basically achieved everything its going to achieve ever, and needs to move on from the 80s. Tossing out a tax cut isn’t going to win anymore.
It’s said that Maddow Disease is really nasty.
37point margin in the last election to a 6point margin in this one. It’s a victory, but it’s a worrying one.
This is CNN! Why the win for Republicans in Arizona 8 is still good for Democrats
Yes the lack of motivation on the right is a worrying problem.
And the high motivation on the left to repudiate the President should also worry people.
If this trend doesn’t concern you then I guess the results of the House election will be really surprising for you.
Should be fun for some of us to watch.
Moderator Note:
This is a bad faith comment.Yes, I’m sure you’ll thoroughly enjoy Democrat victories.No, but I’ll enjoy the narratives that get generated to explain whatever outcome we see. Those are always highly entertaining.
Back during the reign of Bush the Elder, after he had beaten Dukakis, I started to think to myself, “Y’know, the Republicans can’t just keep winning on the basis of how terrible and rotten the Democrats are. Someday the Demos won’t seem so rotten, and Republicans will have to win on their own merits.”
I’m still waiting for Republicans to win on their own merits.
I don’t know that the narratives will be that entertaining. There are two, some part of both is likely the truth. 1) there is a back lash against Trump 2) the Republican Congress did not give voters a reason to turn out.
The combination of these two things creates a problem. At this point it seems like we are just waiting to see what will happen. Trump is not going away so neither is the backlash. The Congress does not seem like it will do anything important before the election.
Is “first off-year election” a decent narrative when one points out that Obama lost 63 seats in that situation?
The narrative around here will depend on the outcome:
Republicans hold congress: Trump is a titan bestriding our politics and driving all before him.
Republicans lose congress: McConnell and Ryan are quisling traitors who betrayed America!
After passing one of the most unpopular and divisive bills in history. Losing 63 seats in an off year election is not the norm.
I prefer not to make guesses about what the norm is in today’s politics. Sixty-three seats is the last “norm” in the last comparable situation. Are you suggesting that this presidency hasn’t done anything unpopular?
Of course I do, its why I was hoping we wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the last President. If we hold the Senate at least we get the judicial nominations. That should be pretty easy given the map. Fingers crossed.
The margin of victory in this special election may have not been as large because Trent Franks (R) resigned his office due to a sex scandal.
I agree and I would add…it’s nobody’s fault but there own. We have a Special Council investigation heading into its second year with nothing to show but a couple of process crimes (dubious) and illegal activity by a couple of figures that occurred a couple of years before their association with Trump. This, as has been thoroughly discussed, was tasked with finding “collusion” between Trump/campaign and Russians to manipulate the election. Only Trump–not Hillary, not DNC, not China or North Korea–just Trump and Russia. This selective fact finding solely against the Republican President was given birth by a Congress, both Houses of which were controlled by Republicans. Mountains would appear on Earth, Ice Ages would come and go, before this would ever have happened to a Democrat President whose Party controlled Congress. Yes a mid term is difficult for the Party in power, but most difficult when that Party shows so often that it would rather be the minority Party with no responsibility any greater than biting at the ankles of the Democrats while those Dems moved this country to socialism—officially.
I believe this is true for many Republicans, even those elected in 2016. Big whup . . .
The problem is that no one race really says anything by itself. But at this point there have been numerous such special elections held in various States and a trend can be determined, which is that Democrats are over performing in these otherwise very Republican districts or states. The reasons for this I am sure are as numerous as the number of races.
A win is better than a loss but, particularly in the context of other recent races, the trend is concerning. Since the 8th was substantially reconfigured in 2012, the GOP candidates have won by 28%, 51%, and 37%. The turnout was this election was only about 7% less than for the last mid-term contest in 2014.
The good news is that it is still six months to the November election and a lot can happen.
Even when Republicans win, they consider themselves losers. Even when Democrats lose, they consider themselves winners.
This is a problem.
The complaint misses the following point. The specific race while good for Republicans still fits in the larger trend of Republican under performance in these races. Since none of these races are decisive about the future of the congress victory for the Republicans in them is less meaningful in the back drop of the upcoming general election where the over all trend seems to be favoring Democrats overall with respect to retaking control of the House of representatives. I think had the Republicans won this district with numbers closer to their past performances bucking the trend of their under performance or Democratic over performance (I guess the two may be different but hard to distinguish) it would be a bigger thing.
My Google-fu is weak today.
Are there any studies that show special elections are predictive of regular elections, especially showing they’re predictive of a change of control in the Congress? @valiuth points out the trend. It seems most here assume this is somewhat predictive of trouble for the GOP in the midterms. But again, is there research that shows this?
I think the two keys for GOP candidates are
1) is Trump’s approval over 40 percent and
2) can the Democrats run on an issue that generates the same intensity as the anti-Iraq war campaign they ran in 2006?
If Trump tanks, and the Dems find a message that can win, then we get a Blue Wave. If not, then Congress gets even closer to an exactly even partisan-divide.