While national Democrats are having trouble capitalizing on President Donald Trump’s unpopularity, Democrats at the state level are starting to win special elections in districts that Trump won handily in 2016.
On Tuesday of this week, Democrats won special elections in state House districts in Oklahoma and New Hampshire that had gone for Donald Trump in 2016. Trump won those two districts handily last year by double-digits, but the Democrats prevailed by double digits on Tuesday.
The Washington Post reports that the special election in Georgia earlier this year, where Democrat John Ossoff barely lost a Republican held Congressional seat to Republican Karen Handel is starting to look like an aberration.
According to data assembled by Daily Kos and mapped by Daniel Donner, Democrats have performed better than Hillary Clinton in 27 out of 35 congressional and state-legislative special elections held this year. And they’ve done better than President Barack Obama’s 2012 margins in 25 out of 35.
And often it hasn’t been close: In 23 out of 35 races, Democrats have bettered Clinton’s margin by double digits. In 12 races, they’ve done so by 20-plus points — i.e., turning a 10-point Clinton loss into a 10-point Democratic win.
Democrats have also won a Republican-held seat in a special election 25% of the time, which is astonishing, while Republicans have yet to pick off a single Democratic seat.
