by Alex M. Parker

Special elections in New York, Nevada don't necessarily predict the future, but the results create anxiety anyways

Someone trying to use special election results to gauge the national mood could be forgiven for being a bit baffled.

In November of 2009, Bill Owens unexpectedly nabbed the New York 23rd District, which had traditionally been Republican, in the special election to replace John McHugh, who resigned to become Secretary of the Army. While the race signalled the growing influence of Tea Party-style candidates -- the conservative vote was divided between third-party candidate Doug Hoffman and the GOP nominee, Dede Scozzafava, who eventually withdrew from the race -- it failed to signal the Republican wave which would stun Washington a year later.

But even after the 2010 drubbing, Democrats continued their upstate success with an unexpected win in the New York 26th District in May, where the Republicans' Medicare plan played a crucial role. That seemed to signal a turnaround for Obama and the Democrats, but any hopes of that were dashed after the party lost two special elections in New York City and Nevada.

The Special Election for Nevada's 2nd District, in which Republican Mark Amodei defeated Democrat Kate Marshall, may represent a more obvious win for the GOP. The vast district includes most of the state, geographically, including its second-biggest city, Reno. It was previously represented by a Republican, although in the 2008 presidential race votes were split between Obama and GOP nominee John McCain. But the Democrats failure to keep Rep. Anthony Weiner's seat, after he resigned following an online sex scandal, stunned political observers who expected the party to be able to hold onto the district which has stayed blue for decades. Republican challenger Bob Turner defeated Democratic State Assemblyman David Weprin by 54 to 46 percent.

Democrats claimed the results were due to peculiarities and not the continued plummeting of Obama's approval rating.

During a conference call with reporters, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, claimed it was hard to draw too much from a race which began with such "unusual circumstances" as the Weiner Twitter scandal. New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who held the 9th District for 18 years, claimed that he's never heard it described as a bellwether, and that its strong Orthodox Jewish population makes it more conservative than most New York City districts. Schultz claimed that, despite losses, the true measure of Obama's strength heading into the 2012 election are polls showing that he does well when matched with the individual GOP contenders. That may be true, but most political scientists view approval rating as the best overall predictor of an election, and Obama's popularity seemed to be a deciding factor in the New York race, where 55 percent of voters disapproved of his performance, according to one poll.

One key fact stands out.

In both races, the Republican nominees took pains to oppose Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare plan, the deeply unpopular Republican proposal to convert the senior healthcare federal program into a voucher-based system. By defusing that as an issue, Turner and Amodei avoided being associated with Republicans in Congress, who are also troubled with low approval ratings.

The results would seem to suggest that voters remain angry with both parties, but are generally more willing to support an outsider than a Democrat, which they view as immediately tied to the White House. That makes it hard to predict exactly how voters will exact their vengeance in 2012, a national race where the party machines will be doing their best to tie each candidate and incumbent with the positions of their parties. But while it's true that special election results have limited value as a way to predict the future, these results certainly still paint a troubling picture for the White House.

 

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Special Election Results: Troubling, But Not Apocalyptic for Democrats | Politics

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