You get used to seeing election results on Tuesday nights during primary season, and generally the outputs, apart from who the winning candidate is, aren’t things to pore over as there really is no correlation between turnout for primaries and turnout for general elections.

But there was one race on Tuesday that got quite a bit of attention once the polls closed, and that is the special election for the Ohio 6th district House seat.

The district flipped from a +7 Democratic advantage in the 2012 election to a solid Republican district (even Sherrod Brown lost it during his last run) in 2016, and has stayed there since. In 2020 TFG won that district 64-35.

The seat had previously been held by the wingnut Bill Johson who resigned to take a college presidency. Republicans ran Michael Rulli, a state senator. The Democrats ran Michael Kripchak, a veteran and a businessman. Johnson won that district 68-32 in 2022.

Early voting gave Kripchak a 20 point lead, and then as the same day votes started being added, Rulli took the lead and the race was called at that point. I also have to add the caveats that this was a low turnout election, and in the end Kripchak could not flip the district. On the other hand, Kripchak is projected to only lose by 9% in a +29 Republican district. And the new conventional wisdom that Democrats are more likely to vote in low turnout elections was reaffirmed.

I can’t predict what will happen in that district in November, but I think it’s fair to anticipate that the rematch will return close to (if not better) results for Kripchak. And even if it’s not enough to flip the seat, it could help reelect Sherrod Brown. Brown lost that district by only 2 points in 2018. I’m also interested in seeing what happens in November because Kripchak only spent $25,000 on his campaign and he’s going to have a lot more money available to him after Tuesday night.

There is one correlation between special elections and the general election, and that is that consistent over-performance in special elections is correlated with electoral success, and the Democrats’ average over-performance is 7%.

I think that’s enough encouraging signs for this post. Stevie’s got the right attitude for right now: