(Newser)
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It can be dangerous to draw broad conclusions from special elections, but last night's results from New York and Nevada make it safe to say that "the special election scorecard is starting to look pretty ominous for Democrats," writes Nate Silver at the New York Times. Coming from Silver the stats guru, his opinion is derived not so much from the gut as from crunching various stats from the special elections last night and two previous ones.
"Taken as a whole, (they) suggest that Democrats may still be locked in a 2010-type political environment," he writes. "Democrats might not lose many more seats in the House if that were the case, since most of their vulnerable targets have already been picked off, but it would limit their potential for any gains. And it could produce dire results for the Democrats in the US Senate, where they have twice as many seats up for re-election."
