Some quick research: The Republican is black (usually doesn't matter but if he has some ties to the local black community that could help in a very low turnout special election) and he owns a few car dealerships meaning he has high name recognition with his name everywhere on billboards in the area...and of course it was a dirt low turnout election the Democrats probably didn't even try for considering it was still a Safe R seat. But winning over 90% in a district that's over 30% black means he either actually won the black vote or turnout utterly cratered in heavily black areas. We'll have to look at the precinct results to see.
I think literally that - that the Democrats didn't bother fielding a candidate here - has to explain it. I'm guessing if he won over
90% and outperformed by
62 points, that has to be more than just a strong GOP candidate. He probably didn't have a Democratic opponent and instead faced an Independent, Green and/or Libertarian who scraped together a few votes.
EDIT: Okay, although that would make a lot of sense, it's not what happened.
Per 270toWin, there was in fact a Democratic nominee, but somehow, she won just 9.7% of the vote (to Mike Reichenbach's 90.1% - per 270toWin, it's 90.3%, but I'm going with
what Ballotpedia said, which is that he won just 90.1% and that 14 votes were for write-in candidates). It's also an interesting point that the GOP primary was competitive but that the Democratic primary had just one candidate. Also, one of my other suspicions was confirmed - the Democratic candidate (Suzzane La Rochelle) was white. I'm guessing this meant that a lot of African-American Democrats decided not to support a white Democrat over a black Republican and probably they mostly stayed home while more than usual went for Reichenbach.
