Tuesday’s special election to fill an open Republican House seat in Ohio’s 6th congressional district turned a lot of heads.
The district is as red as it gets. Stretching south from Youngstown and hugging the eastern border of the state, it’s the gateway to West Virginia. Trump took 72% of the vote there in 2020—more than any other congressional district in Ohio—and the previous Republican incumbent, Bill Johnson, won it by 35 points in 2022.
So it wasn’t at all surprising when Republican Michael Rulli was elected Tuesday to serve the remaining months of Johnson’s term. What was surprising was his victory margin.
That’s a staggering underperformance for a Republican in this district. And it’s not like he didn’t try. Rulli’s campaign had $700,000 to spend between the primary and general election. His Democratic opponent, Michael Kripchak, raised $20,000.
For a Democrat to perform so well in one of the reddest districts in the country is eye-opening, but the larger significance of what Kripchak accomplished stems from how it’s part of a well-established pattern that dates back two years to the Dobbs decision.
And that’s noteworthy because there is evidence that special election results track fairly closely with national House popular vote totals in the subsequent congressional election. With Democrats outperforming their registration numbers and polling across the country—and doing it reliably—we would expect them to be in a strong position heading into the fall.
But of course that’s not what we’re seeing.
The Democratic over-performance in special elections is not showing up in the generic House ballot, which is effectively tied. And we know presidential polling shows a tight race between Biden and Trump.
So what’s going on here?
Are conditions so unusual in 2024 that special election results lack the predictive power they’ve had in years past—or are polls missing something important?
There are two schools of thought on this matter.
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