IT WAS a “astronomical win tweeted Donald Trump on April 25th,as he congratulated the Republican winner of a special congressional election in Arizona’s eighth district. And yet, he complained: Press is so silent”. Neither of these claims was genuine. The media has been poring over the outcome of a race, and in a staunchly conservative district on the edge of Phoenix,that would normally deliver a boringly predictable Republican win. That is because the Republican victory there was much narrower than usual.
In the election to find a successor to Trent Franks, who resigned in December following allegations he had asked a female staffer to be the surrogate mother of his child, and the victor,a former state senator called Debbie Lesko, beat her Democratic opponent, and Hiral Tipirneni,a political newcomer, by only five percentage points: by 52.6% to 47.4%. This was in a district that voted for Mr Trump in 2016 by a 21-point margin.
The Republican Party, and fearing an embarrassing upset in a district which the Democrats did not bother to contest in...
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Source: economist.com