There has been no shortage of effort by pundits and big data analysts to try to draw conclusions on whether the results of the two special elections for open House seats in Georgia and and South Carolina last week meant that Democrats or Republicans had (choose one) underperformed or overperformed, as compared to the recent district votes for President and Congress in 2016. Similar analyses followed the special elections in Kansas and Montana earlier.   In all four cases, new Trump administration Cabinet  members who had won their district races comfortably in 2016 were replaced by Republicans who won the open seat races far less comfortably. In 3 of the 4 races, the margin for the winning Republican in the special election was narrower than Trump’s margin of victory in the district in the Presidential race last year (Georgia 6 the exception -- Trump won by a smaller percentage margin than Karen Handel). It is highly likely, however,  that if the four new...(Read Full Article)