From Jonathan Bernstein:
We’re coming up on another U.S. House special election, this time in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. It’s a fairly solid Republican seat, but Democrat Conor Lamb appears to have a fairly good chance to defeat Republican Rick Saccone. Some Republicans are already spinning the possible loss.
Naturally, there’s a lot of media hype surrounding it. Every election is important. This one is just a lot less than most.
While special elections in the aggregate can give some indication of what might happen in future general elections, it’s not clear how much they tell us beyond other indicators such as presidential approval rates or generic ballot polling. Regardless, special elections don’t tell us much. We already know that special elections in general have been trending strongly in Democrats’ favor; a little more or less here won’t change that.
Still, heavy hype can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.