So go the midterms?

Ohio’s special election gives insight. Or not.

The tea leaf reading game in politics and political analysis these days is predicting the direction of congressional midterms this November.

Will there be “a blue wave,” in which Democrats take the majority of one or both houses of Congress? Or will the Republicans retain control of one or both houses?

It’s a fool’s game, in one way. Why not wait for the election? The nation will decide when it decides.

But the game is heavy with meaning for Trump lovers and Trump haters alike because midterm elections are usually seen as referendums on the sitting president.

Will the voters rein in the president or seek to balance him with more Democrats? To a large degree that is how the system is designed and that is what voters in the United States tend to do in midterms — humble the president.

They did it, in a big way, to Barack Obama in 2010. They even did it to Dwight Eisenhower — in a big way — in 1958.

The party of the sitting president usually loses seats in midterm elections.

In any case, the outcome of the 12th Congressional District special election in central Ohio Tuesday (to fill an open seat until January 2019, so there will be another election in November) was supposed to be a harbinger of what is to come — a blue wave, a red standing pat or a wash. Was it? Who knows? But the result, seemingly, was something of a wash — Republican Troy Balderson, an Ohio state senator from Zanesville, may have eked out a victory over Democrat Danny O’Connor, the Franklin County recorder. But absentee and provisional ballots are still to be counted and could give the victory to Mr. O’Connor.

The Republican “won” in a Republican district by less than 1 percent.

The Democrats can claim a moral victory in any case in that, normally, a Republican would win in a walk in the 12th, which is suburban Columbus and smaller towns to the north and east.

If not all politics is local, most congressional races are highly influenced by local factors and the candidates running, as we saw earlier this year in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District race between Rick Saccone and Conor Lamb.

Mr. Balderson and Mr. O’Connor both ran competent if undistinguished campaigns. Both committed one major gaffe. Both were partisan cookie cutters. Gone are the independent spirits who used to get elected to Congress in Ohio — like Robert T. Secrest and John Ashbrook and Wayne L. Hayes.

Mavericks don’t get congressional nominations these days. In Mr. O’Connor’s case, the gaffe was saying that he’d vote for Nancy Pelosi to be Democratic leader of the House if that’s who his fellow Democrats in Congress wanted. His gaffe was being honest.

Mr. Balderson’s gaffe was equally goofy and irrelevant. Seeking to boost voter enthusiasm in Muskingum County, he said, “We don’t want someone from Franklin County representing us.”

Columbus is in Franklin County and the implication, possibly, was that it is a den of liberal iniquity.

But part of the 12th district is in Franklin County and the last congressman, Pat Tiberi, was from Franklin County.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich also once represented a version of the district, and he too is from Franklin County.

President Donald Trump has taken credit for Mr. Balderson’s victory. He held a rally in the district 10 days before the election and that probably ginned up GOP turnout. But he also deserves credit for motivating Democrats and helping to make the race close in what one year ago was strong Trump country.

The tea leaf has two sides.