Democrats on Tuesday pulled off another surprising special election upset, this time capturing a Missouri statehouse seat in a deep-red district that President Donald Trump easily carried in 2016.
Democratic candidate Mike Revis defeated GOP nominee David Linton on Tuesday night by a 4-point margin in a seat Trump carried with 61 percent of the vote just over a year ago, and which former President Barack Obama lost by 12 points in 2012. That’s a major swing — and the latest time Democrats have vastly over-performed their previous numbers this year as they look toward a potential wave election in the fall.
“Representative-elect Mike Revis’s victory tonight will undoubtedly send another shockwave through the GOP as we continue to run the best candidates focused on addressing local issues and improving their neighbors’ quality of life,” Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee head Jessica Post said in a statement.
Democrats have now picked up 35 state legislative seats across the country in special elections, while Republicans have picked up just four since Trump took office. This is the latest deep-red seat that Democrats have flipped and, like the party’s recent victory in a Wisconsin state senate election, indicates how revved up the Democratic base is.
There will undoubtedly be higher overall voter turnout in the 2018 general election, making it harder for progressive base enthusiasm alone to power a major wave. But this win, as well as Democrats’ improved numbers in a trio of other Missouri special elections they lost Tuesday night in heavily Republican areas, are the latest signs that white-hot liberal enthusiasm is creating new opportunities across the country for Democratic candidates, even in areas that have moved hard against their party in recent years.
That’s good news for Democrats across the country — including those staring down tough reelection fights, like Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO).
Yes. Thirty-fifth turnover since Inauguration 2017.
Slow and steady, step by step, district by district.
I think the results show how disgusted Republicans are with gop. They are staying home.
Yeah, that qualifies
Yes, and the Ds are more enthused this cycle.
@hychka
ETA: I appears that it was a very low turnout election. The D won with only 1787 votes total, whereas in 2016, the R won with 11,516 votes out of 15,482. (This was against a Libertarian; the Ds didn’t have a candidate even.) So I am dead wrong about D enthusiasm.
The most important elections this year are to the state legislatures. We are where we are today in part because of how many state governments the GOP won in 2010. By controlling the redistricting process for a decade they gamed both the legislatures and the US House. If we want to change that next decade, we need to flip state legislatures. That journey has already started. It needs to take a big step forward this year.
Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress seem to be hell-bent on becoming a smaller tent, cleaving slavishly to the Feebleminded Fraudster because they fear alienating his base. I suppose they think that will insulate them from primary challenges. But it seems to me to be a recipe for disaster in the mid-term elections. I would like to know more about what is happening at the level of state legislatures – are the Republicans there as cowed by the “base” as their counterparts in Congress? Has the party truly been captured by the Dotard and his base?