Random Trivia from the 2018 Midterms

I have three final election articles left (or at least planned) before we say goodbye to politics for a while (I need a break).  I will say that my mood has markedly improved since Wednesday morning (watching my hero Claire McCaskill lose put a giant damper on the night for me, though in the days since the victories of Jon Tester and a number of House Democratic challengers, not to mention potential for Kyrsten Sinema & Bill Nelson to join the Senate in January has lifted my spirits), and as a result I want to share some trivia from last night.  I'm going to steer clear of most of the major firsts, but bravo to people like Jared Polis, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Sharice Davids, Deb Haaland, and Angie Craig who broke down barriers on Tuesday.  Instead I'm going to focus on one woman who bucked a lot of political trends this week and then check in with some of our trivia articles I've written in the lead up to the election.

Rep.-Elect Lucy McBath (D-GA)

1. Lucy McBath Makes History...Twice

Arguably the coolest bits of trivia that I've seen involve Congresswoman-elect Lucy McBath of Georgia, who pulled off an upset on Tuesday (though a small one if you had looked at the polls leading up to the election).  McBath, before Tuesday, was best known as the mother of a teenager who was murdered in Jacksonville Florida in 2012.  McBath, with her election, becomes the first person to limit a special election winner to less than a full-term since Colleen Hanabusa in 2010, and before that it hadn't happened since 1994 with Mark Neumann.

Essentially what this means is that Karen Handel, whom McBath defeated, won the special election last year for the open seat of Tom Price, who resigned to join the Trump administration.  Normally if you win the special, you tend to win the next general election.  However, Handel's opponent in the special election declined to run, and as a result McBath was able to run a more stealth campaign, capitalizing off of strong turnout from Stacey Abrams' run for governor to defeat Handel.  Since Djou's inclusion here is due to a technicality (he only won his seat to begin with in 2010 because Hawaii foregoes primaries when they have special elections), this is weirdly similar to Neumann's win over Peter Barca during the 1994 Republican wave.  Considering Neumann only held the seat for two terms before three ill-fated runs for higher office, I suspect McBath would prefer that the similarity ends there.

McBath also joins her future colleague Lauren Underwood of Illinois in another, perhaps more monumental distinction: McBath and Underwood are the first black women to defeat a white incumbent in a general election for Congress.  Historically, black women who have successfully won public office have done so either by winning open seats or defeating an incumbent in a primary, frequently another African-American.  Only two times has a black woman defeated a white incumbent in a congressional primary (Carol Moseley Braun over Alan Dixon in 1992 and Ayanna Presley over Michael Capuano earlier this year), but it's never happened in a general.  This is a sign of real progress considering that frequently African-Americans experience a "Bradley Effect" when they challenge Republican incumbents, and will hopefully open up more opportunity for black women to run in areas that are not super liberal or "safe" seats for the Democrats.

Rep-Elect Cindy Axne (D-IA), the first woman to serve
in the House from Iowa

2. Checking in With Our Trivia Articles

We write a lot of trivia articles on this blog, so I'll be doing a bunch of links for them here so you can check them out if you haven't read them previously, but I wanted to see if the trivia actually panned out for any races on the map in 2010.  This is an older article, but it's worth noting that while Iowa elected its first female senator in 2014, it also elected its first female representatives this year with Abby Finkenauer & Cindy Axne, meaning that only Alaska, Vermont, Mississippi, and North Dakota haven't elected a Democrat to the House after this year.  Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn will be that state's first female senator, and Maine, South Dakota, and New Mexico all elected their first female governors.

Moving to more recent articles, we had none of the Top 5 states end their gubernatorial "one-party" streaks this year, although South Dakota came pretty close.  Texas came close, but missed on the one-party streaks for the Democrats, though it does appear that Arizona could make it off of the list if Kyrsten Sinema's lead holds.  If that's the case, the new #10 will be Kentucky, which hasn't elected a Democrat since Wendell Ford in 1992.  Kevin Cramer, who initially ruled out a run for the Senate, changed his mind and end up winning a promotion in North Dakota as a result.  Despite initially dropping out (with no other options for the incumbent), Chris Collins reconsidered his run and ended up winning by just over 1-point in New York; it seems doubtful that he'll fulfill the term, however, considering the charges against him.  It appears that 2018 resulted in, from the looks of things, only two races that we qualified as "close," (though results are still likely coming in in Texas-Beto O'Rourke may well get within two-points before the end of the day).  Otherwise, it's just Kyrsten Sinema, who is currently up about a point though they're still counting ballots in Arizona, and Rick Scott, who leads Bill Nelson in Florida by 0.2 points.  Should Scott end up winning that race, Nelson will be the first Democrat in twenty years to lose a Senate race by less a percentage point (the last being Rep. Scotty Baesler in Kentucky in 1998).  This is a bizarre stat I just realized while researching this article-in that time eight Republicans have lost Senate races by less the a percentage point, but not a single Democrat (until, possibly, now).

Finally we have the tipping point election, which I'm actually reluctant to call just yet.  Though we don't know for sure who will win in Arizona and Florida, they certainly wouldn't be the tipping point Senate race, as they would, at most, get the Democrats to 48 seats when they need 51.  Texas is in third, followed by a near tie between Indiana and Missouri, both decided by just under six points at this juncture.  At this moment Claire McCaskill's race is the tipping point contest, though it's not entirely clear if that's how it will end as, like California or Arizona or Florida, it's likely that Missouri is still counting ballots, just not enough to make up the difference.  If that sticks, it will be toward the middle of the tipping point states-close, but not crazy close.