DAY 83: Trump lost 20% of the vote in Kansas special election, but he says is a big win

Donald Trump tweeted this today:

Great win in Kansas last night for Ron Estes, easily winning the Congressional race against the Dems, who spent heavily & predicted victory!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2017

He was talking about the special election in Kansas to elect a Representative for District 4. The Republicans won, but they lost a HUGE amount of votes compared to the 2016 election, which shows that Trump is no longer having an effect even in the most conservative parts of the nation (as we will see shortly).

But there's more. Yesterday Donald Trump tweeted this:

Ron Estes is running TODAY for Congress in the Great State of Kansas. A wonderful guy, I need his help on Healthcare & Tax Cuts (Reform).

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2017

So after Trump tried to influence the election on election day, the Republicans lost A LOT of votes. They won, but the loss of votes may signal a HUGE problem for the Republicans in 2018 and 2020. Let's look at the numbers so you can understand why. But before we start keep in mind the following: No Democrat has ever won Kansas's Districto 4 in 20 years. It is a deeply conservative District. So much so that the Republicans won that district in 2016 by 31% more votes than the Democrats. Here are the numbers:

2016 (Kansas District 4)
Dem: 81,495 (29.6%)
Rep: 166,998 (60.6%)
Lib: 7,737 (2.8%)
Ind: 19,021 (6.9%)

(Based on the official voter results for 2016).

For president, however, Trump won that district by 27 points. Still, that's a nearly 2 to 1 win for the Republicans. Now let's see the numbers for 2017:

2017 (Kansas District 4)
Dem: 55,310 (46%)
Rep: 63,505 (53%)
Lib: 2,082 (2%)

(Based on the unofficial voter results for 2017).

As you can see, the 2 to 1 advantage for the Republicans is gone. They did win, but by a mere 7 points.

Worse yet: Even with Trump promoting their candidate, the Republicans lost 61.97% of their 2016 votes. By comparison, the Democrats lost only 32.13% of their 2016 vote.

Now, it is true that there is always a larger voter turnout in presidential elections. But voter turnout does NOT drop as sharply as it did for the Republicans in 2017. To demonstrate this point, let's take a look at the results of the 2014 election for District 4 in Kansas:

2014 (Kansas District 4)
Dem: 69,396 (33.3%)
Rep: 138,757 (66.6%)

(Based on the official voter results for 2014).

As you can see, compared to a presidential election, the 2014 results show less than 30,000 fewer votes than in a presidential election, while Democrats show a loss of about 12,000 votes. But in the 2017 election the Republicans lost over 103,000 votes, while de Democrats lost 26,000 votes.

Which is not 100% good news for the Democrats (they lost quite a bit of votes) but it should be alarming for the Republicans. This isn't just regular low voter turnout, as seen in intermediate elections. This is the Republicans abandoning ship. And losing 103,000 votes could mean losing that seat in the house in 2018 if the Democrats have the over 69,000 votes they got in 2014.

Interestingly, According to The Guardian, Republicans are blaming the governor of Kansas for this loss, even though they got a lot more votes just a few months prior in the presidential election. No; this is Trump scaring Republicans away a mere 81 days into office.

PS: For reference, these are the 2012 Ksas District 4 results according to Wikipedia:

Dem: 81,770 (31.6%)
Rep: 161,094 (62.2%)
Lib: 16,058 (6.2%)

As you can see, they are not that different from 2016 and they confirm the fact that non-presidential elections mean a 30,000 decline in votes for the Republicans. But in 2017 the loss was more than triple that regular decrease. What changed? Donald Trump is in office now. That's what changed. And now even the Republicans don't want anything to do with the Republicans.

Democrats should not celebrate, though. While their vote is consistent in presidential elections, it drops quite a bit in intermediate elections. The only way for Democrats to win the Kansas 4 House seat in 2018 is by actually showing up to vote, as Republicans probably won't or they will vote Democrat just to spite Trump. But that will happen only if the Democratic candidate is more in line with Bernie Sanders than with Hillary Clinton.

PS2: You should also check out FiveThirtyEight.com's analysis on why the Kansas 4 election should worry the Republicans.