Are "Special Election" Results Predictive?
Most Experts Dismiss "Special Elections" as Not Predictive. But They Often Are.
Conventional political wisdom, as it were (remember, Donald Trump was NEVER supposed to win), suggests that special elections are not indicative of trends in the electorate leading up to a mid-term or presidential election.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on several things, including the nature of special elections themselves. What are the demographics and political history of the electorate? Did the election result in a change of party control? Most importantly, is there more than one special election with the same characteristics?
For example, there was a special election in a rural Iowa state house district this week. It caught my eye. Jon Dunwell, a Republican running for a second time after losing in 2020 to an incumbent Democrat, won the seat in a special election with 60 percent of the vote. The Democrat had resigned to take another job.
A Democrat had held the seat for 46 years. Dunwell, a pastor and financial services representative, moved to Newtown, Iowa (about an hour’s drive east of Des Moines) from Orlando, Florida, ten years ago. While most western Iowa is solidly GOP, most of eastern Iowa tilts Democratic, although decreasingly so.
“Experts” will quickly pooh-pooh the win as occurring in a rural “white bread” county that Trump won both in 2016 (one of 32 of Iowa’s 99 counties that flipped from Obama to Trump in 2016) and again in 2020. True. But Obama carried Jasper County in both 2008 and 2012. That Dunwell lost narrowly to a Democratic incumbent less than a year ago is noteworthy. That he captured 60 percent in a special election less than a year later is . . . also noteworthy. Iowa’s lower House now has a 60-40 GOP majority.
Yes, turnout was low at about 22%. That is also noteworthy. It looks like Republican voters showed up while Democrats mostly didn’t.
Jon Dunwell is the second Republican flip of a Democratic district in a special statehouse election this year. In Connecticut, he was preceded by State Senator Ryan Fazio in a tony Fairfield County district that Joe Biden won by 25 percentage points in 2020. From a Hartford Courant story about Fazio’s win:
Republican Ryan Fazio’s victory in a special election to fill a vacant state Senate seat in Fairfield County won’t change the balance of power in the chamber, but his win gives Republicans a shot of momentum in the run-up to the 2022 campaign season, when the governor’s office and every seat in the legislature is up for reelection.
Bolstered by energized voters in staunch Republican parts of the district in Tuesday’s special election, Fazio beat Democrat Alexis Gevanter and petitioning candidate John Blankley.
Turnout was low: just 17,835 — or 26.7% — of the district’s 66,721 registered voters cast ballots, according to unofficial results from the Secretary of the State’s office.
But the win in Gov. Ned Lamont’s home senate district is the first Republican flip of a Democratic seat this year, a fact highlighted by Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel on Twitter.
Fazio, who emphasized who emphasized taxes and public safety during the condensed campaign, said he is grateful to the voters and pledged to work hard for the district. He captured about 52% of the vote.
See a trend here? Low turnout, Republicans showing up, candidates focused on kitchen-table issues. One in rural Iowa, another in suburban Connecticut. Noteworthy.
While it is true that none of the special congressional elections have changed hands, there are still a couple of seats with interesting trends. Note the “margin of victory” in each of these special election races. Again, from a favorite website, Ballotpedia:
There’s not much to glean from New Mexico’s race, given the poor GOP candidate. But the Democrats made big pushes in Texas 6th district (not even making the runoff) and, of course, keep now-White House aide Cedric Richmond’s seat in Democratic hands (which was never really in doubt).
Again, not a lot here, but noteworthy.
Of course, the big bellwether special election may prove to be Virginia, which has been trending Democratic over the past decade. Obama carried Virginia twice, Hillary once, and Joe Biden won by ten percentage points. While my friend Ed Gillespie narrowly lost both a US Senate race in 2014 and a gubernatorial race in 2017, Democrats have run the table here in statewide elections over the past decade.
Glenn Youngkin and his diverse running mates, Winsome Sears (Lt. Gov.) and Jason Miyares (Attorney General) may change that on November 2nd. Those races are all a dead heat, but the GOP has some gusty tailwinds given Biden’s plummeting popularity amidst the shameful Afghanistan withdrawal (Virginia is a heavily military state), rising inflation, and horrific domestic spending policies. What are the big issues? Education and rising crime rates in Virginia.
There are also statewide elections in New Jersey. You’re not hearing much about them, and expectations are low that Republican Jack Ciaterrelli will defeat incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy in what has become among the bluest states in the nation. But Ciaterrelli, with the help of his running mate, popular former St. Senator Diane Allen, may bust through expectations. Again, a combination of energy in the GOP electorate combined with low Democratic turnout might surprise. Some polls in New Jersey have it close.
While this is not the best data set with which to make predictions - and polling should be automatically suspect, given the pathetic track records of the past several elections - the trends are there.
My favorite memory of special elections is 1994. You remember, the year that Republicans won control of the US House (“Contract With America”) for the first time in 40 years. There were two congressional special elections earlier in the year that proved to be harbingers, one in a rural Oklahoma district, and another in Kentucky.
In Oklahoma’s then-sixth district, Republican state legislator Frank Lucas replaced Democrat Glenn English, who resigned to take the reins of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. In Kentucky, Republican Ron Lewis won a special election to replaced the legendary Democratic appropriator, William Natcher, who had passed away. In both cases, the seats had been in Democratic hands for decades. Both foretold the 54 seat swing that occurred that year, handing Newt Gingrich the Speaker’s gavel. While Lewis has retired from Congress, Lucas remains a senior GOP member of the House and ranking member of the Committee on Science and Technology.
So yes, there are unmistakable trends in this year’s special elections, with more to come on November 2nd. Stay tuned.