Special elections tend to have the lowest turnout. That's another way of saying that those who turn out tend to be highly motivated.
But it also means that the statistical scam that the Dems are pulling over the Arizona special election is nonsense.
A Democrat lost Tuesday night, but House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi still said Wednesday that she’s “thrilled” with the results in Arizona’s special House election.
And there are a host of reasons for her to feel that way.
Democrat Hiral Tipirneni lost to Republican Debbie Lesko by just 6 percentage points and forced Republican outside groups to spend more than $1 million in a district carried by President Trump by 21 percentage points. In 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won the district by 25 percentage points.
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland called the loss “a victory.”
“We didn’t get the golden ring, but we pushed them in a district where they should have won by 20 points to winning by 75 percent less and they spent a lot of resources,” Hoyer told USA TODAY.
As Hoyer knows quite well, there's no reason for turnout in a special election to match the numbers of a presidential election year. And that's why the media keeps citing presidential election years.
AZ-8 was Giffords' old district. Then Trent Franks did really well in it. It's not the safe GOP district that the media and the Dems are making it out to be.
In 2016, the total turnout came to around 300,000 votes. In the special election, it was 173,000. That's pretty impressive turnout, but it's far short of election year numbers.