By the way, there were four elections today.
Wisconsin -
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/natio...story.html
Open seat in a rural district that went for Donald Trump by 20 pts, and voted for the GOP by 26 points in 2016. The Dem won it by 9. So call that a 38 point swing in that seat. The national GOP spent money in this race too.
Also in Wisconsin, the GOP did hang on in a seat where Hillary Clinton got 28 percent of the vote in 2016 (the Dem in 2018 got 43 percent)
In Iowa, the GOP retained a legislative seat in a district where the Dem candidate got 35 percent in 2016 (the 2018 Dem got 44 percent)
In South Carolina, the GOP retained a seat where no Dem had bothered to even run for years.. The Dem in 2018 got 43 percent
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The flip in the Wisconsin State Senate seat is the 31st flip so far in the intracycle. The GOP flipped one seat. Seems to me that at least in these off-off year elections, the Dems appear to running far ahead of 2016.
Now of course, one could argue that these races are simply about the local candidates, but the pattern appears to be national. Dem voting percentages up from 5 to 40 percent just about everywhere. And the margin increase in Democratic vote appears to be increasing with time. Last May, the margin increase was closer to 5. Now its getting a lot closer to 15 percent. If the GOP can keep it closer to 5 percent, they might hang on to the House. If its closer to 10, they'll definitely lose the House and probably the Senate. You get into the 15 point range, and we're talking 100+ House seats. That would be a wildly optimistic forecast, but one that would happen if the Dem voting percentage in the midterms went +15 over 2016. I still think that the Dems get around 35-40 seats this cycle in the House. At least now.
Whether this provides some indication on how well Trump is doing or not, I suppose we can argue. But these special election results are pointing to an utter wipeout for the Republicans in 2018. No party can drop 15 percent across the board. I think that might be hard to pull of nationally. But 10 points, that's looking doable.
There seems to be some big, big, big problems in the GOP's campaign right now. They're losing in places like Oklahoma, rural Wisconsin, and Alabama (where truly insane margin swings to the Dems have occurred), and have been losing margin pretty much across the board.