{"id":98,"date":"2017-04-17T16:59:04","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T16:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/?p=89"},"modified":"2017-10-05T17:10:36","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T21:10:36","slug":"20170417-why-georgias-6th-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/analysis\/20170417-why-georgias-6th-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Georgia&#8217;s 6th District Really Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The eyes of the political world are fixated on Tuesday&#8217;s special election in Georgia&#8217;s 6th Congressional District. Many have pointed to Hillary Clinton&#8217;s performance in the district last November as proof that this is now a marginal district. However, recent and historical results emphasize the need for strict expectation control when it comes to both Tuesday&#8217;s vote and a potential runoff contest. Democrat Jon Ossoff may win tomorrow, but should that not be the case, it&#8217;s important to keep the results in context.<\/p>\n<p>We examined the results of 54 statewide non-federal contests in the 6th District from 2002 thru 2014. The contests that were studied were as follows:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Governor<\/li>\n<li>Lieutenant Governor<\/li>\n<li>Secretary of State<\/li>\n<li>Attorney General<\/li>\n<li>Agricultural Commissioner<\/li>\n<li>Insurance Commissioner<\/li>\n<li>Labor Commissioner<\/li>\n<li>Public Service Commission positions<\/li>\n<li>School Superintendent<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In addition, we examined district results in federal contests for President, US Senator and US House of Representatives.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, only one Democratic candidate\u2014the 2002 Democratic Secretary of State candidate\u2014won the major party vote\u2014with 52.8 percent of the vote. Subsequent Secretary of State candidates were defeated by 2 \u2013 1 margins.<\/p>\n<p>Only three other Democrats came close during this time period: 2006 Attorney General (49.9%), 2006 Agricultural Commissioner (49.3%) and 2016 President (49.2%). Beyond those three, the next highest vote received was by the 2006 Labor Commissioner candidate (46.1%).<\/p>\n<p>The only other candidates to receive even 40 percent of the major party vote are as follows:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<th>Office<\/th>\n<th>Year<\/th>\n<th>Democratic Two-Way Percent<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Agricultural Commissioner<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2002<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>44.4%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>US House Representative<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2010<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>44.1%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Attorney General<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2002<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>44.0%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>President<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2008<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>43.9%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Governor<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2002<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>42.1%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>US Senator<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2008<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>41.9%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Lieutenant Governor<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2002<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>40.6%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Labor Commissioner<\/td>\n<p><!-- Office --><\/p>\n<td>2002<\/td>\n<p><!-- Year --><\/p>\n<td>40.0%<\/td>\n<p><!-- Percent --><\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>The other 38 Democrats received less than 40 percent, or the party failed to field any candidate at all.<\/p>\n<p>President Obama won 38.2 percent in 2012\u2014a 5.7 percent decline from 2008. Hillary Clinton topped Obama 2012 by 11 percent in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Accordingly, we have insufficient evidence that this district has emerged as reliably marginal. Should Ossoff win or at least come close, the result, when coupled with the recent election results in Kansas&#8217; 4th District and several other legislative contests will provide irrefutable proof that the Democrats are in their strongest position since 2006 when they regained the House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The eyes of the political world are fixated on Tuesday&#8217;s special election in Georgia&#8217;s 6th Congressional District. Many have pointed to Hillary Clinton&#8217;s performance in the district last November as proof that this is now a marginal district. However, recent and historical results emphasize the need for strict expectation control when it comes to both [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/web-staging.ncecservices.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}