Democrats Won Another Trump District By a Landslide, This Time In Missouri

Since the last presidential election, there have been some pretty wild swings towards Democrats in districts won by Donald Trump. The largest was an 86-point shift towards Democrat Linda Belcher in Kentucky’s House District 49 after Republican candidate Dan Johnson committed suicide after being accused of molesting a 17-year-old girl. His wife ran in his place, and even though this is about as bad of a situation as it gets, it’s still difficult to wrap your head around how a Trump +50 district could turn into a Democrat +36 district in less than two years.

It happened again last night—albeit nowhere near as dramatic a swing—but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. Democrat Lauren Arthur defeated Republican Kevin Corlew by 19 points in Missouri’s 17th district, which backed both Donald Trump and Mitt Romney by four points in the last two presidential elections. For all the media hysteria around the narrowing of the generic congressional polls, actual elections this year and last have mostly been anything but. It’s clear that the commander-in-cheeto has motivated a huge slice of the Democratic electorate to show up and vote, and for the first time since the 2008 election, Democrats are certainly more driven to go to the polls than Republicans. Let’s hope that this trend continues into the midterms this fall, when we know that plenty more Republicans will show up and vote than have in the smattering of special elections since 2016. As a great man once said: don’t boo. Vote.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.