It's not election season, but in this country, there's almost always an election somewhere. And you can look at all the polling you want -- but there's no poll as meaningful as an actual election contest.
So enjoy this report from a South Carolina legislative house district which was having a special contest on Tuesday:
According to The Downballot:
Scott's 41-point victory over Republican Bill Oden represented a huge improvement on Kamala Harris' narrow 51-46 margin in the 50th District, a largely rural constituency based in the Midlands in the central part of the state....
What's more, the contest was the first legislative special election this year to take place in a district with a large Black population: According to Dave's Redistricting App, 51% of the voting-age population is African American, while 44% is white. [Both candidates are Black.]
... across the country, Democratic candidates have been turning in exceptionally strong showings in special elections this year ... As a result, across 23 such races tracked by The Downballot, Democrats are now running more than 16 points ahead of the top of the ticket on average in 2025. And even without Sutton's outlier win, that figure stands at more than 13 points. By comparison, leading up to Donald Trump's first midterms in 2018, Democrats had outperformed in special elections by an average of 10.6 points.
Broad wins like this for the party out of power don't always promise similar success in regular elections. But they certainly show which voters are paying attention and something about how they are feeling. South Carolina Democrats must be fired up, most likely about the ongoing horror show in Washington. The job for all of us is to meet this popular dissatisfaction with organizing for future victories when we have more of a chance to regain a sliver a democratic power in 2026 and beyond.
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