“...The result is consistent with a pro-Democratic national environment
There’s some chatter out there that Ossoff’s showing is a bad sign for Democrats. He didn’t clear 50 percent, they say, and he barely improved on Clinton’s performance in Georgia 6.
I think that’s a flawed argument.
For one, Clinton had already greatly improved on previous Democrats’ performance in Georgia 6. She lost to Trump there by only 1.5 percentage points. Former President Barack Obama lost the district by 23 points in 2012, as did Democratic congressional candidate Rodney Stooksbury in 2016.
So if you’re just looking at the 2016 presidential result as your benchmark you’re probably missing something. Instead, our best estimate of the partisan lean of a district is to take a weighted average2 of its past two presidential election results. By that measure, a Democrat would be expected to lose Georgia 6 by 9.5 percentage points in a neutral national environment (one in which the two parties fought to a tie nationally). Democrats did far better than that on Tuesday, losing by 2 points. The Democratic candidates combined took 49 percent to the Republicans’ 51 percent."
(Via.) 5 Takeaways From The Georgia 6 Special Election | FiveThirtyEight:
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