In the wake of Democrat Travis Childers’ stunning eight-point special election victory over Republican Greg Davis in Mississippi’s 1st District last night, the Swing State Project is moving its rating of this race from “Tossup” to “Leans Democratic“. Several factors give Childers the edge here:
1) First, the size of his victory. At 8 points, this wasn’t nearly as close as many had predicted. In fact, it was a romp. After winning 16 of the district’s 24 counties on April 22, Childers won a stunning 20 of 24 counties last night, improving his performance virtually across the board. Notably, he even improved upon his 17% in the ultra-conservative DeSoto County (Davis’ base), winning a full 25% of the vote there in the second round.
2) While John McCain will likely carry this district by a wide margin in November, Childers now enjoys the advantage of incumbency for a brief time. And, if the history of Mississippi’s congressional delegation tells us anything, Mississippi voters like their incumbents.
3) Most importantly, history is not on Greg Davis’ side here. It is extremely rare for the victor of a special election to be defeated in the next general election. Indeed, the only recent example of this scenario occurring was in the 1998 elections, when Republican Bill Redmond of New Mexico lost the Democratic-leaning seat that he won in a 1997 special election. Of course, Redmond’s special election win was a truly special circumstance: a strong Green Party candidate won 17% and split the left-leaning vote. Davis has no such excuse here.
4) Finally, Davis may be left out in the cold by the national GOP the second time around. The NRCC dumped $1.3 million into the special election here — nearly 20% of their cash-on-hand at the beginning of April — and came up astonishingly short. The NRCC may decide, given their enormous financial disadvantage, that they may have other priorities this fall — like saving their incumbents. The same goes for Freedom’s Crotch.
The full list of SSP’s House Race Ratings is available here.
any chance they might just pack it in? I know its being funded by rich donors, but presumably those donors would like to see some return on their money. So far, there’s been no evidence of that.
I looked at the ratings against and noticed something I didn’t before, Davis (D-TN) is on the races to watch list. Why?