The Republicans won a special South Carolina House election on Tuesday, but the Democrats overperformed by double digits compared to their performance in the 2024 presidential election.
Republican John Lastinger won 62.3 percent of the vote in the election for the 88th district seat, beating Democrat Chuck Hightower, who secured 37.7 percent. This gave the Republicans a net win of +24.6 percent over the Democrats.
This represents an improved performance for the Democrats compared to the 2024 presidential election, when President Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in the district by 67 percent to 32 percent, according to The State newspaper. In that election, the Republicans won with a net margin of +35 percentage points.
So, the Democrat candidate did better than the last election but still got absolutely annihilated. Woo. Yay. Happy Day.
This is such a non-news story for anyone but a DNC staffer it’s ridiculous. Maybe someone wants to breathlessly report on how much better or worse the green party candidate did last election as long as we’re talking about things that don’t actually make any difference.
If you “outperform by double digits” and still lose by a double digit margin that just highlights how terrible you are, and how fucked we all are. Had they managed to win that seat or even get things close enough that the loss was in question that would be a news story, this is just reading political tea leaves.