April 21, 2017

Reading the Kansas 4 and Georgia 6 Tea Leaves

What to make of the results of the first two of this spring’s special House elections? Start off by putting them in perspective. They pose a challenge to both political parties, but especially to Republicans, who have been used to an unusually stable partisan alignment, an alignment that has become scrambled by Donald Trump.

What to make of the results of the first two of this spring’s special House elections? Start off by putting them in perspective. They pose a challenge to both political parties, but especially to Republicans, who have been used to an unusually stable partisan alignment, an alignment that has become scrambled by Donald Trump.

Those of us who can remember the 1964-84 years have seen much greater partisan churning. Almost half of the congressional districts that voted for Richard Nixon in 1972 elected Democratic congressmen. Some 191 districts split tickets. In 2012, that number was down to 26, the lowest since 1920.

The number rose in 2016, to 35, with another dozen or so on the cusp. That reflects Trump’s distinctive appeal. Exit polling reported he increased the Republican margin among non-college-educated whites, from 25 points to 39, though he reduced it among white college graduates, from 16 points to 4.

Which leads us to the special elections. The first, on April 11, was in Kansas’ 4th Congressional District to fill the seat left by Mike Pompeo, whom Trump tapped to be director of the CIA. The district is composed heavily of non-college-educated whites — with two-thirds of its voters in Sedgwick County, where Wichita is, and the remainder in rural counties. Republican Ron Estes won by a 53-46 percent margin — well below Trump’s 59-32 percent margin in the district in the 2016 presidential election.

Democrat James Thompson carried Sedgwick County, apparently because of switches by college-educated voters. But Estes carried a solid 62 percent in the rural counties, well ahead of the 2014 percentages there for two other Republicans, Gov. Sam Brownback and Sen. Pat Roberts.

Given the dynamics of special elections (you can cast a protest vote — and for a locally attuned candidate — without turning the whole government over to the opposition), this looks something like a traditional, pre-Trump margin in what has been a safe Republican seat for 20 years.

The turnout was heavier and the race more contested Tuesday in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District to fill the seat of Tom Price, who is now the secretary of health and human services. The district, in the northern Atlanta suburbs, has one of the highest percentages of college graduates in the nation. Mitt Romney carried it by 23 points in 2012. Trump won it by 1.5 percent last year. Despite its Republican leanings, it has heavily Democratic black, Hispanic and Jewish blocs.

National Democrats rallied to 30-year-old filmmaker and former House staffer Jon Ossoff, who raised a phenomenal $8.3 million. When the first returns came in, Ossoff had 71 percent of the vote, while Republicans were split among 11 candidates. But as all the returns poured in, that was reduced to 48 percent. Ossoff faces a June 20 runoff against Republican Karen Handel, a former Georgia secretary of state and Fulton County commissioner.

In the end, 51 percent of voters chose Republicans, and 49 percent voted for Democrats. Ossoff got 1.3 points more than Hillary Clinton did in last year’s presidential election. The 11 Republicans got 1.4 points more than Trump. Obviously, either candidate could win in June.

There’s a clear contrast with Kansas 4, whose results suggest that traditional Republican margins in other less educated, nonmetropolitan areas are greatly threatened. Georgia 6 suggests that in places heavy with college graduates, the 2016 Trump numbers are the new norm — at least in races without incumbents who have established themselves as being in sync with the district.

A glance at the list of the 23 Republican districts carried by Clinton shows that a half-dozen are heavily Hispanic with well-known incumbents. But most are heavily affluent and college-educated. Five such districts in Southern California and one in northern Virginia have increasing immigrant populations; three in Texas, like Georgia 6, have affluent traditionally Republican voters repelled enough by Trump to vote for Clinton.

There would be many more such heavily college-educated districts vulnerable to Democratic takeover but for the fact that Democrats have long since taken them over, starting in the 1990s.

The good news for pro-Trump Republicans is that most of his November 2016 voters have stuck with him. His current 42 percent job approval rating is only 4 points below the percentage of the national vote he won five months ago.

The bad news for pro-Trump Republicans is that there is zero evidence that he is making inroads among the slightly larger percentage of those who voted against him. Georgia 6 suggests that the highly educated among them are heavily motivated to get out and vote Democratic. Republican incumbents who considered their districts safe may not have worked them hard enough to survive a spirited challenge.

Trump threaded the needle by winning over enough non-college-educated voters to win 100 electoral votes that Barack Obama had won in 2012. Republicans may need to thread a different needle to hold the House.

COPYRIGHT 2017 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.