From one Democratic organization or another yesterday:
Breaking news from Kentucky: Democrat Linda Belcher just won the reddest district we’ve flipped since Trump was elected!
Kentucky’s 49th House District gave Donald Trump a colossal 72% of the vote in 2016, but Linda just turned it blue, winning the support of more than 68% of voters.
According to Ballotpedia, in 2016 President Trump won Kentucky 62.5% – 32.7%, a 2-1 victory over Clinton. But it’s also worth noting that the same day Trump won Kentucky, the local Republican candidate for the seat just won by Ms Belcher, the late Dan Johnson, only won by roughly a single point.
A swing from 49.5% to 68+% is quite significant. However, the late Mr. Johnson had been accused of a drunken sexual assault just prior to his suicide, and this may have motivated the GOP voters in the district to stay home, especially if the GOP special election candidate was unpopular or unknown. Additionally, yesterday’s winner is a known quantity to the local voters, having held the seat twice before, and lost it twice before. It appears to be a competitive district at the state level.
So it’s hard to judge the significance of this Democratic victory, although the victory gap (68 – 31) does make it tempting to see this not boding well for the Republicans. That’s a much larger gap than this district usually would have. I’d draw a graph but I’m out of time.
