In last night’s special election in Kansas’s 4th congressional district — a deeply red region — the Republican candidate, Ron Estes, eked out a victory over Democrat James Thompson to claim Mike Pompeo’s seat, which the former representative vacated to head up the CIA under President Donald Trump.
While Estes took 53 percent of the vote compared to Thompson’s 46, the jubilant reactions on the left could easily lead one to believe that the Democratic candidate pulled off a major upset. Some of this glee is understandable; Pompeo won his last re-election battle in 2014 by a 31-point margin, but Estes kept the district red last night by a much slimmer margin.
Many argue that last night’s close race is a sure sign of surging Democratic momentum in the age of Trump, the fruit of a “resistance” movement that is supposedly reacting decisively and in significant numbers against the Republican party at large.
However, such a portrayal leaves out a crucial detail: The Kansas-04 election was influenced primarily by the extreme unpopularity of Kansas governor Sam Brownback, a Republican who has been in office since 2011. The results of a recent Morning Consult survey shows Brownback as one of the least-popular governors in the country — coming in a close second to New Jersey governor Chris Christie — with just over a quarter of Kansas citizens approving of him. A glance at local Kansas papers reveals just how much public discontent with the governor influenced this race.
Because of the deathly pallor that Brownback casts on the Republican party in Kansas, the results of this special election are not terribly instructive as to the current state of public sentiment toward the Republican party as a whole. And these results especially can’t be wielded as proof of national hatred brewing against President Trump and his administration.
The results of next Tuesday’s special election in Georgia’s 6th congressional district will likely be more instructive as to the state of public sentiment toward both political parties. The race pits one young, Democratic favorite — Jon Ossoff — against a number of viable Republican candidates, one of whom has a background in the GOP establishment, and another of whom seems to have captured the support of voters more in the Trump mold. The results of this race will bear much more national significance if no candidate reaches 50 percent on Tuesday and the race heads to a runoff on June 20.
Even so, any extrapolation from special elections — whether in Kansas, Georgia, or anywhere else — must be tempered. Very few voters turn out for these special contests compared to regular November elections, making it difficult to read too much into the results without risking inaccurate interpretations.