These developments—in the suburbs and farmland north and east of Columbus, a House district gerrymandered by state Republicans in 2011 to help ensure double-digit victories—are eerily reminiscent of the recent Pennsylvania special election that flipped a district from red to blue. Trump flew in to boost the imperiled Republican candidate, banking on the fact that he’d won that district by a landslide in 2016, apparently not knowing or caring that his local approval rating had plunged to 44 percent. Then, as now, Mike Pence showed up in a district where he normally need not have bothered. Then, as now, Paul Ryan’s campaign group flooded the district with foot soldiers.

Then, as now, the seat had been vacated by a Republican incumbent. In Pennsylvania, the longtime congressman Tim Murphy had quit after he was outed for allegedly telling his extramarital mistress that if she was pregnant, she should get an abortion; in Ohio, the longtime congressman Pat Tiberi quit last fall for a more mundane reason, to take a business job. Then, as now, the Republican seeking the open seat was a state legislator. Then, as now, the Republican candidate dodged the issue that the GOP had originally planned to tout as its marquee talking point of 2018: the new tax-cut law. Balderson hasn’t stumped for the law in Ohio, because the district’s voters don’t believe they’ll reap its bounty; in the latest Monmouth University poll, only 23 percent said they expect their taxes to drop.

Perhaps most importantly, then, as now, the Democratic candidate was a newbie who sought to fit the district. In Pennsylvania, the ex-Marine Conor Lamb (ridiculed by Trump as “Lamb the Sham”) hewed to moderate positions. He wanted to keep Obamacare but opposed single-payer universal care, he supported the Second Amendment, and he distanced himself from the GOP’s favorite bogeyperson, Nancy Pelosi. And in Ohio, O’Connor—the elected recorder of Franklin County—has opposed single-payer, supported the Second Amendment, distanced himself from Pelosi (calling for “new leadership in both parties”), and opposed the abolition of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (abolishing ICE is de rigueur in liberal circles). In addition, Lamb and O’Connor pledged to protect Medicare and Social Security from Republican cuts—in O’Connor’s words, “every dime.”

This is the 2018 Democratic template for competing in red districts: Ignore Trump (because base Democrats and Democrat-leaving independents already dislike him), and stick to issues that could draw converts from the other side. Lamb needed crossovers to pull off his narrow upset; O’Connor, in order to beat Balderson, will need to score heavily with college-educated suburbanites (especially women) in populous Franklin County who normally vote GOP. He may have reason to hope. In Franklin County, the early voting, tallied near the end of July, was overwhelmingly Democratic. That’s his backyard, home to one-third of the district’s electorate—including a large pool of what’s known locally as “Kasich Democrats.”