History shows special elections can be good predictors of the next election cycle. Tom Brunell, a political scientist at the University cheap wholesale clothing of Texas-Dallas, studied special elections from 1900 to 2008. When Democrats gained seats in special elections, they also gained in the next general election 82% of the time, he found. "It's a horse race, and we're definitely out of the gate for the 2012 election," Brunell said. "But we're at the first post here."
One pollster who correctly predicted the outcome said he's not sure it means anything nationally. "Jane Corwin and her team ran a lousy campaign," said Siena College's Steven Greenberg. "They let Hochul beat them up on the Medicare issue, and they didn't come up with a response."
Tuesday's election followed the resignation of Rep. Chris Lee, a Republican who sent shirtless photos to a woman he met through the Craigslist website.
Final, unofficial results gave Hochul, the Erie County clerk, 47%. Corwin, a state assemblywoman, received 43%. Tea Party candidate Jack Davis took 9% of the vote. He has run as a Democrat in the past, and polls say he took votes from both major candidates.
The district stretches from the suburbs of Buffalo to the suburbs of Rochester. Decimated by manufacturing losses over decades, the district's demographics skew older than the rest of America. Republicans have an 8-point advantage in voter registration.
"New York Republicans, even upstate Republicans, are not like Republicans across the nation," Greenberg said. Although they have a favorable view of House Speaker John Boehner and support repealing the health care law, they also overwhelmingly favor tax hikes on the wealthy.
The architect of the Republicans' Medicare plan, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, didn't object to the idea that it was a defining issue in the race.
"There is a Medicare story to be told cheap fashion here," Ryan said on MSNBC. "The president and his party have decided to shamelessly distort and demagogue Medicare."
By the time Democrat Kathy Hochul declared an upset victory over Republican Jane Corwin in the special election Tuesday night in the western New York district, Medicare was the defining issue.
According to a Siena College Research Institute poll conducted late last week, 74% of voters who identified Medicare as the top issue supported Hochul.
Democrats seized on the result as evidence that the Republican plan for sweeping changes to Medicare was backfiring, and the GOP was cracking over the issue. On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 57-40 to reject the Medicare plan. Five Republicans voted with the Democrats.
Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the New York election shows his party could pick up 97 House seats next year — more than the 63 they lost to the GOP last fall. "I'm not going to get cocky," he said. "The fact is if we can win in one of most conservative Republican districts in America, then we can win in many other places."
"To predict the future based on the results of this wholesale clothing unusual race is naive and risky," Pete Sessions, Israel's GOP counterpart, said in a statement. He made no mention of Medicare.
