Now that we’ve had some time to digest last week’s special election results – or, in the Democrats’ case, have the equivalent of a gallstone attack over them – I think that it’s a time that we look at some of the House’s special election results over the last two election cycles generally. Partially because we’re starting to get enough samples to do a laughingly pseudo-scientific analysis of them; and partially because doing so will allow us to destroy the Other Side’s laughingly pseudo-scientific analysis. Less cynically, there are general trends that might be discernible, down there in the muck.
Below the fold is a look at every special election to date in the 111th and 112th Congress. I chose not to look at the 110th Congress because I’ll readily enough concede that the net +3 Democratic gain was part of that party’s generally successful 2008 election strategy – although I note with some amusement that the three seats (IL-14, LA-06, & MS-01) all flipped back in the 2010 election, which means that it was a wash overall anyway. I also didn’t include LA-01’s flip (and flip-back), mostly because while Cao’s win looked like a special election it really wasn’t. Likewise, it was also a wash.
Continue reading Looking at the recent House special election record.