Good signs for the GOP
Republicans have won special elections but 2018 will be different
Another week, another special election for the House of Representatives. This was the big one, in Georgia’s 6th District in metropolitan Atlanta. Political junkies of all ideological stripes had been waiting all month for it. While Democrat Jon Ossoff held a lead in most polls throughout the campaign, Republican Karen Handel surged late and pulled off a four-point victory.
If nothing else, her win earned the GOP bragging rights. The Democrats went all-in for Mr. Ossoff, spending an astonishing $30 million in the hopes of picking up the seat — and not just to deliver a symbolic rebuke of President Donald Trump.
A Democratic win in this historically Republican enclave would have been a boon for Democratic fundraising and candidate recruitment, with a corresponding drag on GOP efforts.
But it was not to be. The Republicans walked away with the “W” that earned the party a good news cycle. But is it worth anything more than that?
Hard to say. Special elections are, yes, special. It is hard to read much into them as they tend to swing based on parochial concerns. Low turnout also can muddy the inferential waters.
So far this year, there have been four special elections for the House that pitted the major parties against one another. Two of them — in South Carolina’s 5th District and Kansas’ 4th — saw substantially less turnout than in the 2014 midterm elections.
It is hard to draw conclusions from races where so many voters do not show up. Who is to say that the people who did participate reflect the general views of everybody else?
But the other two — in Montana (which has just one House seat for the whole state) and in Georgia’s 6th district — saw robust turnout, above the levels achieved during the 2014 midterms. The Georgia contest also saw a substantial investment by the two parties. In fact, it was the most expensive House election in history. So, it is fair to say that the results of these two races roughly represented district sentiment.
The Republican Party must be pleased. In Montana, Republican Greg Gianforte won 50 percent of the vote, compared with 56 percent for Mr. Trump last November. But Mr. Gianforte was a manifestly bad candidate, having assaulted a reporter on the eve of the election.
In Georgia, there was nothing particularly wrong with Republican Karen Handel, although nothing especially exciting about her, either. She pulled in 52 percent of the vote. In November, Mr. Trump narrowly won the district, with 48 percent of the vote over Hillary Clinton’s 47 percent.
What this suggests is that, at least for now, the Republican coalition is holding together. These elections do not offer definitive evidence, of course. After all, they are just two House seats out of 435 spread across the nation. Still, it looks as though the sorts of voters who have elected Republican Congresses for most of the past decade and a Republican president in 2016, are still on board with the party.
The unpopularity of the GOP’s health care bill (which a recent CBS News poll found to have just a 32 percent approval rating) does not seem to be affecting Republican candidates for office, at least not yet. And while Mr. Trump’s antics — on Twitter and otherwise — have damaged his reputation (he’s down to an anemic 37 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll), they do not seem to be harming Republican congressional candidates.
Beltway Republicans may breathe a sigh of relief after the recent special election, but they should not let down their guard. Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, combined with the historically poor track record of incumbent parties in midterm elections, means that the GOP majority, especially in the House while not so much in the Senate, remains in peril.
Congressional Republicans need to buckle down and get serious about passing the agenda they campaigned on. That’s their best route to victory in 2018.