A series of special elections where a party wins a bunch of seats they haven’t held in a long time have been a pretty good predictor of mid-terms. Maybe this year is the big exception.
AZ and TX weren’t the general. They have been winning all these specials precisely because their base is turning out very heavily, which is due to two things, neither of which apply in primary elections:
1) The Dems’ methods for turning people out to the polls, which are very good. The Democrats aren’t trying to get people out to the polls in primaries. Individual candidates might be but not the Dem organization, which is very different.
2) The Democrat base’s hatred for Trump. That motivates high turnout with no need for the Democrats to even do anything.
Well, yes and no.
In most of these special state elections, the turnout has actually been exceptionally low: CT was 3000 people, with the D winning by 51 votes; GA senate was 9%.
As best I can tell, ONLY the FL Sarasota race had even decent turnout. So, no, the left is NOT “mobilizing their base.” The conservatives are, as I’ve been saying, back to normal lives and sick of constant electioneering.
Second, the left has been pouring ridiculous amounts of money into races such as AL, GA congressional seat they lost, VA, and most recently Sarasota. GOP on the other had has been saving it for the 2018 generals, and they have a lot of it. about 5-10 times MORE than the Ds.
Third, when you get to elections that “matter,” we are 6-1. The only loss-—while a big one in AL-—was 100% candidate related. Moore got 685,000 FEWER votes than Shelby did just one year earlier, and 350,000 fewer than Sessions did when he ran UNOPPOSED six years earlier. AL was entirely on Moore.
But AZCD8, the GOP buried the Ds in turnout 2:1. In TX, despite MOST of the GOP running unopposed, Rs had 500,000 more . . . in a state supposedly going blue.
In short, these seemingly unending low-level specials not only do not excite our side, they irritate us.