Republicans have won Tuesday’s other special election, in Nevada’s second congressional district, with Republican former state Sen. Mark Amodei winning the GOP stronghold. This following on top of Republican Bob Turner’s upset win in the historically Democratic stronghold of New York’s ninth district.
At time of writing, with 68% of precincts reporting, Amodei leads Democratic state Treasurer Kate Marshall by a margin of 57%-37%, and he has been projected as the winner by the Associated Press. It should be noted that there has likely been a large majority of the total votes already counted — Nevada is a state that has heavily embraced absentee and early voting, and those ballots were mostly tallied up very early in the count.
The seat was vacated this past spring, when GOP Rep. Dean Heller was appointed to the Senate to take the place of fellow Republican John Ensign, who resigned due to ethics issues and a likely expulsion stemming from his sex scandal involving a former aide’s wife. Heller was already running for the Senate seat, and polls have suggested that the race next year against Democratic Rep. Shelly Berkley could be competitive.
To be clear, this is a historically Republican district, the reddest in the state. It voted for John McCain by less than a one point margin in the 2008 Democratic wave, but before that it voted 57%-41% for George W. Bush in 2004. And even Sharron Angle, the disastrous GOP Senate nominee in 2010 who blew a solid pick-up opportunity for the party against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, carried the district by a 50%-43% margin.
