Morning Digest: Why special elections should have Republicans very nervous

_{The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.}

Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast

Leading Off

● Special Elections: We've been keeping an eye on special elections for many years now, and they have a lot to tell us. Six years ago, we were able to start comparing the results of specials to presidential numbers, thanks to our efforts to calculate presidential results for state legislative districts nationwide. Shortly thereafter, we were able to show that these results are closely correlated with the House popular vote and reflect the political environment in a given election cycle.

This week, we're diving deep into the data to show you how well this correlation continues to work in the years since we first identified it.