anyone mentioning "pre-Dobbs" or "post-Dobbs" should not be taken seriously
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska%27s_1st_congressional_district
Seriously, I feel like we've just memory holed that special after two days, when two days after Flores won everyone was changing their November ratings for TX-34 to Tilt R. It's four months to election day, so I doubt it was just a random fluke. Is it really so inconceivable that Dobbs improved the environment for Democrats? If so, what explains that performance?
This happened a lot in the Trump administration, but it's difficult to tell whether it was more due to the environment or the scandal. Here are special elections due to scandal-related resignation with the opposite party in the White House:
CA-25 2020: This was probably a factor, although Garcia has continued to be successful.
MI-13 2018: Uncontested.
IL-18 2015: LaHood (R) actually outperformed.
NY-11 2015: Donovan (R) also outperformed.
FL-19 2014: Clawson (R) outperformed.
Excluded stuff before this because it's annoying to find presidential results by CD.
Pretty mixed record overall. I don't doubt that the scandal had a lot to do with the result in this election but imo I do not think that that was the only factor which made this so close.
