Arizona Republican Debbie Lesko won the special election in Arizona last week by a shockingly small margin for a strongly Republican district that Donald Trump won by 21 points in 2001. But Fox host Neil Cavuto called her effort “heroic.”
Before the election, FiveThirtyEight.com wrote that based on the Republican tilt in the district, “an 8-point Lesko win would be exactly in line4 with past special-election results that have pointed to a Democratic wave.” Lesko won by five points. After the election, FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver wrote, “If Republicans are winning by only 5 points in this sort of extremely red district in November, dozens of more competitive seats will flop to Democrats — more than enough for them to take the House.” The only “silver lining” was that the Republican underperformance was “only slightly worse” than previous ones this cycle.
But before Democrats start counting on a majority, Silver also warned that “the generic congressional ballot … shows Democrats ahead by only 7 points and implies that the battle for House control is roughly a toss-up.”
Cavuto noted the GOP anxiety in his introduction when he said, “You could almost hear Republicans across the country just breathing a sigh of relief” over Lesko’s victory. But he attempted to downplay Lesko’s underperformance by asking what she made of the fact that “Democrats and many in the establishment media said, ‘Yeah, but you didn’t win by the same margin that Donald Trump had won your district?’”
After Lesko said she planned to visit Trump once she gets to Congress, Cavuto said, “Congratulations on it. It was quite an heroic effort because it was looking dicey as you pointed out.”
However, Cavuto did acknowledge that Lesko’s win “still might be telegraphing problems for Republicans in November.”
Watch it below, from the April 26, 2018 Your World.
