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Harbinger? GOP scores big House win in PA special election

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NBC: Democrats still haven’t figured out how to beat Trump.
Score one win for Donald Trump early in the 2020 election cycle. After getting Trump’s endorsement and a significant amount of campaign support, Fred Keller easily defeated Democratic opponent Marc Friedenberg in a special election to fill the House seat in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district.
Is this a harbinger for next year, or simply a district returning to its normal partisan position?
Republican state Rep. Fred Keller easily defeated Democrat Marc Friedenberg in a special election Tuesday in Pennsylvania’s 12th District. With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Keller led the Penn State professor, 67.8 percent to 32.2 percent.
The result was not unexpected given that President Donald Trump would have carried the deep-red seat by 36 points in 2016 under the current congressional lines.
Trump traveled to the district Monday to boost the state lawmaker. He also recorded a robocall encouraging voters to support Keller and praised him in a tweet Tuesday.
Trump supporters hailed this as an indication that momentum is swinging back after the disappointing midterm elections six months ago. It’s always tricky to use special elections as harbingers, however, especially with seventeen months to go before Trump runs for re-election. As Roll Call notes, PA-12 might have just reverted to form as a strong GOP district. It has a Cook index of R+17, which still shows that Keller overperformed, but a wide win was predictable. It helped that the seat became vacant when popular Republican incumbent Tom Marino resigned over health issues rather than scandal, although he had to withdraw from an appointment to the Trump administration over criticism of legislation he sponsored.

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