What do the Kansas and Georgia elections tell us about 2018?

Here's why Democrats are pumped

Republican Ron Estes won, but narrowly.
(Image credit: mark reinstein / Alamy Stock Photo)

President Trump is historically unpopular, and the question on everyone's minds this month is how much of that unfavorability could overflow into the 2018 elections. The special elections in Georgia and Kansas to replace Trump's Health and Human Service Secretary Tom Price and the Director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, respectively, might offer an early, if revealing, testing ground for how things could go next November.

To take back the House, Democrats will need to net 24 seats in 2018, a task that many analysts once considered almost impossible due to the slim number of competitive congressional districts on the map. "In the next Congress, there will be fewer than two dozen House Republicans sitting in congressional districts won by Barack Obama in 2012," The Washington Post's Stuart Rothenberg writes. "That means Democrats will need to swipe at least a handful of districts carried by Mitt Romney four years ago to win control, and that is a huge, uphill fight for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee."

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Jeva Lange

Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.