Two Numbers Show Why The Democratic Freak Out Over Losing In Georgia Is Total Nonsense

Some Democrats, liberals, and progressives are freaking out because they didn’t win special elections in heavily Republican districts that they were supposed to lose. There are two statistics that drive this point home and serve as a reminder that the freak out is based more on emotions than political reality.

For those who are thinking that Democrats did poorly in these special elections, here is a chart showing the Democratic gains from Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report:

Republicans won each of these seats in 2016 by solid double-digit margins, but Democrats gained 12 points in Kansas, 8 points in Montana, 6 points in Georgia, and 7 points in South Carolina. In 2016, Trump won South Carolina by 14, Montana by 22, Kansas by 20, and Georgia by 5 points. There is a reason why the Trump administration chose the representatives from those districts to serve in the cabinet. These are very safe Republican seats. The Democratic candidates were not only on hostile political turf. They were outnumbered by a lot.

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The other important statistic relates specifically to the Georgia special election:

GA-06 was an insane outlier, where a normal special election got blown out of proportion and turned into this national spectacle.

As I tweeted last night:

There are 94 other Republican-held seats that had closer margins in 2016 than GA-06. No matter what activists and Democrats may have convinced themselves of otherwise, the district wasn’t as close to flipping as they thought.

Winning a special election won’t make everything right with the world again. A special election would be meaningless and wouldn’t change anything politically. The real fight that Democrats need to win is on health care. Trump could care less who wins these special elections, but he is desperate for a signature legislative achievement. If Democrats really want to hand Trump a devastating defeat, they can do so by winning on health care in the Senate next Thursday.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association