100+ specials since Trump’s return show Democrats in good position to reclaim the House
The Downballot has followed special elections more closely than anyone else for over a decade, which is why we’re pleased to bring you this special report looking back on races this cycle to help us understand what they’re telling us about November. When it comes to specials, we had two key insights. First, instead of looking at these races one by one, we aggregated them. And second, we realized we should compare them to the results of the most recent presidential election within each district, to give us a uniform baseline. That latter step was only possible, though, because we’d done the extremely hard work of actually calculating those presidential numbers on a district-by-district basis. Some other folks reputedly had data like that, but they kept it under lock and key. We, on the other hand, made it freely available to all. It was a long time before our methods achieved wide acceptance, but now everyone knows what you’re talking about when you say, for instance, that Democrats ar...
