TX-06: Dems in Disarray!

[MT Treasurer]

It’s been a well-established pattern by now that turnout patterns in special elections are far from reliable predictors of (regular) general election turnout among Republicans. Cue the predictable 'Republicans in disarray' articles when the Democrat (unsurprisingly) comes very close to winning this race or narrowly pulls off an 'upset.' Best for the GOP to lower expectations here, not that they will do it.

One could also add that Republicans fared very poorly in special elections throughout 2009 and that their losing streak that year set off alarm bells in GOP headquarters.

[MT Treasurer]

It is intellectually disingenuous and grossly misleading to compare a highly partisan federal election like this to a nonpartisan superintendent race (essentially between two Democrats) where no Republican was on the ballot and which had incredibly low voter turnout (for rather obvious reasons).