Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and local elections.
Nathaniel Rakich at ABC writes about the D win in a NH special election:
“Hang on,” you might be saying. “Only 2,800 people voted in this election.” (New Hampshire House districts are really tiny.) “Does that really mean anything?” On its own, no — any single special election can be influenced by any number of factors, including candidate quality or parochial issues. But Democrats have been posting special-election overperformances of that magnitude all year long, in all kinds of districts. And on average, they have won by margins 11 points higher than the weighted relative partisanship of their districts.
That’s more than just an impressive streak — it’s a potential sign of a Democratic wave election in 2024. In each of the past three election cycles, a party’s average overperformance in all special elections in a given cycle has been a close match for the eventual House popular vote in the eventual general election — albeit a couple of points better for Democrats.
And according to Daily Kos Elections (albeit using a different methodology), the correlation between special-election results and the House popular vote has been strong since at least the 1989-90 cycle — though, importantly, there have been some exceptions, like 1997-98.
