So the big electoral news over the weekend was the special election victory by Democrat Bill Foster in the race to replace former Speaker Dennis Hastert.  He defeated the well-funded and slightly too well-known Jim Oberweis, who had last been seen in state politics being pushed out the side door in the 2004 Senate race to make way for the glorious Alan Keyes.  As everyone has noted, this was a Republican-leaning district, which had voted solidly for Bush both times.  The election was bizarrely on a Saturday and turnout was pathetic, which makes a Republican loss is all the more telling.  Republicans should overperform in special elections relative to general elections, because they tend to vote at higher rates in irregularly scheduled and “less important” contests.  Democratic turnout is historically more closely tied to presidential elections, which suggests that general election turnout for Democratic voters may be huge.  The result certainly reflects the demoralisation of GOP voters and the far greater enthusiasm of Democrats.  The district’s capture by a Democratic challenger shows the continuing trend throughout Illinois’ suburban districts towards the Democrats that we have already seen in the election and re-election of Melissa Bean in IL-08 and the remarkably competitive IL-06 race in 2006 between Roskam and Duckworth to determine who would get Henry Hyde’s old seat.  This suggests that other vulnerable Midwestern Republicans, including some who survived the Ohio slaughterhouse last time, may be in greater jeopardy than in the previous cycle.  The open Ohio and Minnesota seats now seem especially vulnerable to flipping to the Democrats.  This result also has to be disconcerting for Mark Kirk in IL-10, Schmidt in OH-02 (the Heather Wilson of the east) and Walberg and Knollenberg in Michigan, all of whom were narrowly re-elected and all of whom are in at least partially suburban districts. 

What may be happening is a strong pro-Democratic trend in the Congressional races combined with a split electorate for the Presidential race, which seems likely to remain split or even tilt towards the GOP as the Democrats thrash out the rest of their nominating contest over next three months.  What should have been the Democrats’ 1952 or 1920 may turn out to be another 1988.

Update: If you were to list all of the Republican-held seats that voted between 50 and 58% for Bush in 2004, you would have at least 43 seats that could be flipped, including the now-open AZ-03 (Shadegg’s seat), MN-06, Michelle Bachmann’s seat, and both the aforementioned IL-06 and IL-18.