By John Gizzi
Tuesday, 07 August 2018 07:52 AM
If Democrats win the nationally-watched special U.S. House race in Ohio’s historically Republican 12th District Tuesday, speculation will immediately turn to the question of how large the “tsunami wave†against the GOP will be this fall.
As of Monday, the contest between Republican State Sen. Troy Balderson and Democrat Danny O’Connor, the Franklin County (Columbus) Recorder of Deeds, could go either way. A Monmouth poll completed at the end of July showed Balderson leading O’Connor by a 1 point margin — 46 percent-45 percent.
But a just-completed Emerson poll gave O’Connor the edge by 47 percent to 46 percent—in a district that has been firmly in Republican hands for all but two of the last 80 years.
Following the Democratic wins in the special U.S. Senate race in Alabama in December and the Pennsylvania-18 special House race in March, more than a few political scientists are beginning to liken an O’Connor win to that of the Democratic capture of President Ford’s old House seat in Michigan in 1974 — the third Democratic pickup of Republican territory in a special election and the start of the wave that led to Democrats winning their largest U.S. House majority in modern times that year.
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https://www.newsmax.com/john-gizzi/gop-ohio-troy-balderson-danny-oconnor/2018/08/07/id/875841/