IRREGULAR ELECTIONS
The surprising tally in Kansas came in as the first of thirteen special elections that would be held from April 2017 through September 2019. All were unexpected, not listed on any political calendar. So voters would need to hear about them on their own and post reminders on their refrigerator doors.
Due to resignations, twelve House seats held by Republicans, and one in the Senate, had fallen vacant. Some of the incumbents had joined the incoming administration, while others faced charges of sexual or kindred misconduct. Two of the thirteen, for the House in Montana and the Senate in Alabama, would be statewide contests.
Careful scrutiny of the first ten could have yielded clues as to how the parties would fare in the November 2018 midterms. One reason for the lack of probing was that all of these seats had been safely Republican, and their candidates ended retaining eleven of them, often by comfortable margins. One exception was the first of two Pennsylvania contests, where a Democrat named Conor Lamb slipped in by 627 votes.
The other Democratic victory, in Alabama, was a special case. The Republican, Roy Moore, had to cope with allegations of child molestation. Still, Doug Jones’s successful run was his party’s first statewide win in fifteen years. How and why he won can be rendered in two quotients. The first was that a remarkable 90 percent of Clinton voters came out for him. The second is that only 49 percent of Republicans showed up for Roy Moore. There’s never been a contest where so many of the party’s supporters—684,668 by my count—sat it out.
The sources of Jones’s strength can be inferred from exit poll responses.1 It emerged that his principal bloc was 367,933 black Alabamians, who were joined by 261,677 whites. This said, it should be noted that almost 70 percent of whites who marked ballots gave them to Moore. That Jones’s lead was so solidly brought by black voters was a landmark. But it was also an anomaly. After all, this is the state that gave Jeff Sessions 63 percent of its votes in his last contested election.
| SPECIAL ELECTIONS: 2017–2019 | ||
| Turnouts Compared with 2016 | ||
| Republicans | Democrats | |
| 39% | Kansas (April 2017) | 69% |
| 101% | Montana (May 2017) | 102% |
| 28% | South Carolina (June 2017) | 40% |
| 67% | Georgia (June 2017) | 101% |
| 41% | Utah (November 2017) | 50% |
| 5% | Arizona (November 2017) | 88% |
| 49% | Alabama (December 2017) | 90% |
| 53% | Pennsylvania (April 2018) | 80% |
| 15% | Texas (June 2018) | 16% |
| 42% | Ohio (August 2018) | 91% |
| 44% | Pennsylvania (May 2019) | 46% |
| 35% | North Carolina (September 2019) | 35% |
| 51% | North Carolina (September 2019) | 63% |
| 48% | Average | 67% |
The best gauge of turnouts for special elections is a comparison with the most recent presidential contest, when the parties are energized and public attention is highest. The table above shows these ratios.
In four of them—Montana, Texas, and one each in North Carolina and Pennsylvania—involvement was about the same.2 What stands out is how much higher the Democratic figures are in the other nine contests. That the Democrats lost seven of them is not at issue. What counts was how galvanized they were.
All the more, since these were states and districts where their party often comes in second. Of course, investing in swing states like Ohio, Arizona, Montana, and North Carolina makes sense. But signs of Democratic fortitude in South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, and Alabama suggest that the national mood is changing. That the Democrats’ overall average was almost twenty points ahead attests that serious shifts were afoot.
It remains to wonder why Republican turnouts were lower—a forty-three-point gap in Arizona, forty-nine points in Ohio—especially in terrain Republicans ordinarily command.3 Their party has been known for its loyalists, who can be relied on to rally, especially for less-publicized races.
Few will admit aloud that their fervor for Donald Trump is waning. Their staying home said it for them.