James A. Barnes is a member of the CNN Decision Desk and co-author of the 2018 Almanac of American Politics. (CNN) Republicans were relieved when Debbie Lesko won a special election on April 24 to maintain GOP control of the Phoenix area congressional seat of former Rep. Trent Franks. But an analysis of the special election returns from the 143 precincts that make up the congressional district in Arizona shows that Tipirneni performed better in many of the Republican-leaning precincts in the district, relative to results from the 2016 presidential election, than in its Democratic enclaves. We grouped precincts in Arizona's 8th Congressional District by the percentage of the major-party vote won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and compared that to how Tipirneni performed in those clusters of precincts in the 2018 House special election. Where Clinton got more than 50% of the vote in 2016, Tipernini ganed less than 5 percentage points.

Source: CNN April 30, 2018 13:07 UTC