What gets missed in ‘special’ elections
Every time there’s a special election somewhere people flip out.
The media—perennially on the verge of losing their minds— always tries to qualify it in some way, but sadly that usually goes something like:
‘Yes, all politics are local, BUT DID YOU SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! OMGZZZ! WE HAVE TO GO COMPLETELY CRAZY BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THIS SITUATION CALLS FOR!!”
Um, yeah. Here’s some friendly advice: Relax.
Remember, when Republican Bob McDonnell grabbed the governor’s seat in Virginia back in 2009 you were supposed to read that as the GOP dispelling “any notion of President Obama’s electoral invincibility.” Because it sent “a clear signal that voters have had enough of the president’s liberal agenda,” don’t cha know.
After that, Republican Scott Brown‘s upset win over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, “put Dems on notice.” Oooh, scary stuff.
Obviously the tea leaves were saying the Dems were done for—and barely a year into Obama’s presidency, too. If only he weren’t so black or something. Oh, but wait a minute …
Defying recent voting trends …. David W. Marsden (D-Fairfax) narrowly won a special election Tuesday night to represent a broad swath of southwestern Fairfax County.
Say what? That’s right, barely a year after the McDonnell election, there was another upset, this time in the Democrats’ favor, back where this whole trend started, in Virginia.
This was followed by the upset in New York where Democrat Kathy Hochul conquered a congressional district that’s only elected three Democrats since 1857. This was seen as “an ominous sign” for the GOP.
So now we fast forward to last night where Republicans held onto a Congressional seat in a conservative Nevada district that has never in its history elected a Democrat. And the GOP picked up the Congressional seat in Rep. Anthony Weiner’s old district in New York.
Oh and by the way, this district in New York will likely be eliminated through redistricting, meaning it won’t even be there a year from now. But somehow this was a “referendum on President Barack Obama’s economic policies“?
Ahem, let me politely characterize my reaction as:
Here’s a little tip, last night wasn’t a referendum. Or a rebuke. Or God coming down from on high to turn a burning bush into a ballot box to tell us anything more than what elections like these always tell us.
Special elections tell us about a specific area at a specific moment in time, no more, no less.
In fact, it’s almost always the same message you would get from the same race during a presidential year—except that during presidential years no one is paying attention down the ticket so they never read that story.
Martha Coakley lost in Massachusetts to Scott Brown because she was a terrible campaigner and she ran a lazy campaign.
Bob McDonnell won in Virginia in large part because Creigh Deeds came off as soft.
Kathy Hocul won in upstate New York because her opponent, Jane Corwin, first came out supporting Paul Ryan’s plan to kill Medicare, then flip-flopped and tried to save her skin. In an older, conservative district you couldn’t have picked a better fight.
If this sounds like it’s discounting local elections, it’s not. It’s actually the opposite. Local elections are the best indication of how that district feels, but usually only on a single issue.
But the important things to look at are:
- What’s the main issue in the race?
- What is turnout like?
Last night in New York it seems the main issue was Israel. Also, it seems like turnout was relatively low.
What does that mean?
Turnout tells you who’s getting excited to vote. Obviously the higher the turnout, the more people there are generally, regardless of party, who want to have their voices heard.
In this case it seems that by and large the people who cared the most about Israel were the ones that came out to vote, and they voted for the guy who got the endorsement of former New York City mayor Ed Koch along with local Jewish leaders.
Mystery solved, Scooby.
Yes, that’s oversimplifying it. But special elections are usually place-holders until the next election. They’re generally not that deep.
Sure, they can give you hints on how to win (or lose) in the current climate. They can also give you an indication of how things are in that one part of one state, but that’s about it because the climate always changes by the next general election.
So to call special elections some kind of national referendum is almost always wishful thinking and a concoction of a media that overhypes political races as if they were horse races. It’s done for ratings and pageviews—and that those have nothing to do with reality let alone governing, well, that’s not generally not as high a priority in covering these things.
