White Oak, Pennsylvania

Last year, about a month before the runoff in the heavily watched special election for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District, another race in the same corner of the state quietly slipped by with little notice from national media. This race was for Georgia’s 32nd state Senate District, which lies within the boundaries of the 6th, though the Senate seat is even more conservative than the House seat.

In the end, the Democratic candidate, Christine Triebsch, wound up losing, but what was important is how she lost. Triebsch was defeated by a 57-43 margin, a 14-point spread that was identical to Hillary Clinton’s 54-40 loss in 2016—and 22 points better than the 67-31 thumping Barack Obama had endured four years earlier.

We sat up and took notice at Daily Kos Elections, even though the Republican won that state Senate special election by a healthy margin. Why? Because if the same margin changes when compared to the last two presidential elections also showed up in the congressional special election, that pointed to a virtual tie. And indeed, the margin changes in the House race were similar, coming in just 3 points under Clinton’s and 19 points better than Obama’s, or in other words, about 3 points weaker in both cases than the shift in the Senate race. And indeed, Democrat Jon Ossoff lost by 3.6 points, 51.8 to 48.2.

What we didn’t pay much attention to at the time was a similarly situated special election in South Carolina’s 84th state House District, where the Democrat improved on Clinton’s margin by 13 points and Obama’s margin by 8. A few weeks later, in the special election for South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District, the Democrat improved on Clinton’s margin by 15 points and Obama’s by 8. While separated geographically, the two districts were similar demographically—more on that below.

This year, in January 2018, we saw a special election in Pennsylvania state House District 35, where the Democrat over-performed Clinton’s margin by a whopping 29 points and Obama’s by 19! Looking ahead to the special election in an adjacent district, Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District, where Clinton lost by 20 and Obama lost by 17, it certainly gives us cause for optimism that Democrat Conor Lamb has a real chance of winning. It’s also consistent with recent polling showing a single-digit race.

But, as it turns out, PA HD-35 and PA-18 are different enough demographically that the comparison might be a little off. Fortunately, a part of HD-35, White Oak, is more similar to PA-18. But how did they vote?