Ossoff lost in the 6th District of Georgia last night. With 99 percent of the vote counted, Handel leads Ossoff 53 percent to 47 percent in a race that many expected to be much closer. Handel had 127,021 votes to the Democrat’s 114,390 ballots.

And so now the Republicans are gloating…

Well, the Special Elections are over and those that want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN are 5 and O! All the Fake News, all the money spent = 0

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2017

Media headlines this week should be: Democrats go 0-4 in special elections… voters reject socialism.

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 21, 2017

… and the Democrats are engaged in a circular firing squad.

What’s the lesson?  Why did the Democrats lose Georgia 6th and South Carolina 5th?  And the other two special elections that were supposedly referenda on Trump?

I said it yesterday…. WHEN YOU ARE NOT EXPECTED TO WIN, YOU SHOULDN’T MOURN THE LOSS.

The story isn’t “Dems Lost”. It is “Dems Making Huge Gains Into Republican Districts”.

Look at these special election results:

The GOP drops by double digits since Election Day 2016.  That’s double digit drop in seven months!!

Nate Silver does a lot of number crunching and concludes:

As compared to the 2016 presidential results, Democrats have outperformed their benchmarks by an average of 14 percentage points so far across the four GOP-held districts to have held special elections to date. As compared to the 2012 presidential election, their overperformance is even larger, at almost 18 points. They’ve also outperformed their results from the 2016 and 2014 U.S. House elections by roughly 11 points, after one accounts for the fact that the special elections were open-seat races rather than being held against incumbents.

Democrats continue to substantially outperform their benchmarks

DEMOCRATIC SWING IN SPECIAL ELECTION RELATIVE TO BENCHMARK*
DISTRICT	2016 PRESIDENT	2012 PRESIDENT	2016 HOUSE	2014 HOUSE
Kansas 4	+22.5	+22.6	+17.8	+15.8
Montana	+16.6	+11.5	+2.7	+7.3
Georgia 6	-0.1	+23.5	+12.5	+17.5
South Carolina 5	+17.4	+12.2	+10.1	+3.6
Average	+14.1	+17.5	+10.8	+11.1

How might this translate for Democrats next November, when all 435 seats are up for grabs? The results simultaneously suggest that an impressively wide array of Republican-held seats might be competitive next year — perhaps as many as 60 to 80 — and that Democrats are outright favorites in only a fraction of these, perhaps no more than a dozen. To some extent, this configuration is a result of Republican-led gerrymandering in 2010. Republicans drew a lot of districts where their members are safe under normal conditions, but not in the event of a massive midterm wave.

In order to win a net of 24 seats next year — enough to flip the House — Democrats may therefore need to target dozens of Republican-held seats and see where the chips fall. They can variously attempt anti-Trump, anti-Republican or anti-incumbent messages depending on the district.

They say the same thing over at The Cook Political Report:

Measured against the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voter Index (PVI), Democrats have outperformed the partisan lean of their districts by an average of eight points in the past five elections:

A Smarter Way to Interpret 2017’s Special Elections

If Democrats were to outperform their “generic” share by eight points across the board in November 2018, they would pick up 80 seats. Of course, that won’t happen because Republican incumbents will be tougher to dislodge than special election nominees. But these results fit a pattern that should still worry GOP incumbents everywhere, regardless of Trump’s national approval rating and the outcome of the healthcare debate in Congress.

Yes, I like the way this looks.