The Hill and USA Today both agree that there is a broader lesson to be learned from this race about the 2014 elections. I’m much less certain. To begin with, special elections aren’t bellwethers, except when they are. If that doesn’t sound particularly helpful, well, it isn’t meant to.
As we might expect, wave elections are often preceded by surprising wins for the victorious side. In 1974, a number of surprising special election Democratic wins in historically Republican districts were the first signals that things were about to go massively awry for the GOP, and played a role in convincing Richard Nixon to resign. In 1994, Democrats lost historically Democratic districts in Kentucky and Oklahoma. In 2008, GOP losses in Illinois, Mississippi and Louisiana seemingly presaged the rout in the fall.
But sometimes waves aren’t preceded by surprising wins. In 2006, the GOP managed to hang on to a seat with a badly flawed candidate in southern Ohio, and kept a San Diego-based district that many saw as a test of Democrats’ chances in the fall. In 2010, the GOP lost a special election in southwestern Pennsylvania that had been trumpeted as the only district won by both John Kerry and John McCain.
Of course, there are also special election upsets that herald nothing. Democrats were riding high in 2004 after winning special elections in South Dakota and central Kentucky, but all of that amounted to nothing in the fall.
