“We are winning on just about every front and for that reason there will
not be a Blue Wave, but there might be a Red Wave!”
President Trump, August 8, 2018“ The blue wave is not a weather event.... It’s made. You have to go out and
knock on doors and make phone calls and do the work. That’s how it
happens—you’ve got to make the wave happen.”
Jason Kander, Let America VoteEvery two years, Americans elect 435 House members and 33 or so senators; every
four years, we elect a president. The outcomes of these elections are scrutinized
because they provide insights into what voters are thinking, because they reveal the
usefulness of different campaign strategies, or simply because of what’s at stake.
Occasionally, federal elections occur outside the normal election cycle to fill
vacancies in the House or Senate. Though these special elections don’t always attract
the same level of attention that on-cycle elections do, the late-2017 election for an
Alabama Senate seat, pitting Democrat Doug Jones against Republican Roy Moore,
captured the public’s attention for a number of reasons. For one, a Jones victory would
affect the narrow 2-vote Republican majority in the Senate. For another, President
Trump expressed strong support for Moore, a staunch social conservative who had
been accused of sexually harassing young women during the 1990s.
Ultimately, Jones won the seat—somewhat of a surprise in traditionally Republican
Alabama. The question is why. Did Jones and his team run a better campaign,
successfully mobilizing African Americans? Was Moore too conservative for Alabama,
or were voters repelled by his past behavior? Did the outcome reflect dissatisfaction
with the Trump presidency or the policy priorities of congressional Republicans?
Ultimately, many 2018 Democratic congressional candidates, particularly those running
in moderate to conservative suburban districts, used Jones’s campaign as a template
for their own efforts, which was one factor behind Democratic House gains in 2018.The 2017 special election between
Democrat Doug Jones and Republican
Roy Moore captured the country’s
attention. Was Jones’s surprise
victory a result of smart campaigning,
widespread dissatisfaction with the
Republican Party, or something else?9
Who gets to represent
the people?
Elections
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