The overall message of 2017 special elections is that Republicans are in trouble
by Matthew Yglesias at Vox
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/21/15846464/republicans-are-in-trouble
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But step back from the specifics of the race and look at all four special elections in red districts held since Donald Trump’s election, and a more optimistic story emerges. Democrats have successfully transferred Hillary Clinton’s gains in well-educated districts to their down-ballot candidates, even while succeeding in making up some of the ground she lost in white working-class ones.
The Democratic Party’s leaders seem to have believed they could improve on her margins in a place like the Georgia Sixth District while being unreasonably pessimistic about the party’s chances in situations like the South Carolina and Kansas races. That speaks somewhat poorly of their judgment and strategic acumen, but the underlying reality revealed by the four elections taken as a whole is actually more bullish for Democrats than the one the party’s leaders thought they were in. If the basic pattern holds up — with Democrats pocketing Clinton’s gains and the GOP not consolidating Trump’s — they are well positioned for the future.
The 2016 presidential election featured a substantial reworking of the underlying demographic map of American politics. Clinton did about 10 percentage points better with white college graduates than Barack Obama had done four years before, offset by doing about 14 percentage points worse among whites without college degrees. Since college graduates vote at a higher rate than non-graduates, this is a decent swap in popular vote terms but was deadly to Democratic fortunes in the Electoral College.
An important question going forward was how much that vote swapping would stick. And the answer of the special elections thus far seems to be fairly optimistic for Democrats. We see in the Georgia race that Democrats have successfully transferred Clinton’s gains with white college graduates into down-ballot races. But we see in the other three races that Democrats have partially made up ground in white working-class areas where Clinton underperformed. That wasn’t good enough to win any of the four seats that have been on the ballot, but those were all seats the GOP won comfortably in 2016.
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