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Special Elections: What they all mean

Last night was a disaster for the GOP, taking Pennsylvania's 18th district that was for the past 20 years a solid Republican stronghold (+20) became democratic.  Yes, the margin was razor thin, but the point is that the GOP, even with Trumps' poor rating should have won this seat.  This is a seat where the GOP usually wins with a 20% margin.  There are more than 100 seats in Congress that are more at risk than PA-18.

However, it is still hard to draw conclusions; the fact is that Lamb (the Democrat) won by less than 1% -- however, PA-18 is a largely electronic ballot district, so recount is out of the question, except for absentee and military ballots, and these account for less than the difference between the two candidates (a few hundred).

What is interesting here is that Lamb got 80% of the number of votes than his "no chance" predecessor, what is key is that his opponent Rick Saccone got only 53% of the number of votes that his predecessor got (who incidentally resigned after it emerged that he strongly encouraged a women with whom he was having an affair -- to have an abortion, when he was one of Congress' most vocal opponent to abortion -- under any circumstances).

On one side for the GOP the problem is that a lot of "Trump voters" in 2016 were first-time voters, and it appears (again its hard to be sure) that many GOP voters stayed home, despite the GOP spending a fortune in advertising.  Once again, the GOP's "chosen one" was less the inspiring; less of a Trump supporter more of a Tea party man, with a "difficult past".  It was partly a self-inflicted wound since he was largely unable to raise money (the GOP and PACs were the biggest spenders), moreover, his Democratic opponent was more to the right than most, had a spectacular resume and was well spoken.

Still, it remains that he only got 80% of the number of votes than did Hillary Clinton in 2016...that's a problem, because if in the midterms the GOP goes to vote, there will be no DNC wave later this year.  On the other hand, on the GOP side, some of the 100 GOP Congressmen may decide to bail before the midterm elections, that would be a huge problem for the GOP -- usually sitting Congressmen get re-elected.  If there is no incumbent the race becomes wide open.




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