So it turns out that when all the votes were counted, Lesko did even worse than what was reported Wednesday morning. The official website of Arizona's Secretary of State has Lesko with 95,499 votes (52.4%) and Tipirneni with 86,771 votes (47.6%). Lesko leads by 8,728 out of 183,118 votes cast.
Trump beat Hillary in Mississippi 700,714 (57.9%) to 485,131 (40.1%). Basically, Hillary won the black belt counties in the western part of the state and Trump won the rest. She won Bennie Thompson's congressional district 64-35% and Trump won the 3 other congressional districts by around the same number, reversed. The statewide PVI is R+9 so those numbers were predictable.
After he was caught in a sex-and-payoff scandal, Blake Farenthold intended to serve out his term and not run for reelection. Instead he was forced to resign from Congress in disgrace.TX-27 s a very gerrymandered district that took a Hispanic-based Democratic district and made it Republican. In 2004, TX-27 was 68.1% Hispanic and the only congressman it had ever known was Democrat Solomon Ortiz.
When Trent Franks retired in December after a sexual harassment scandal, I told a friend of mine to calm down, saying that the district is so red that if it flipped-- or even got close to flipping-- the GOP would have to pack it in and forget the idea of even an effective minority next year. The PVI is R+13 and Trump beat Hillary 58.1% to 37.0%. Romney and McCain even did slightly better than Trump did. This is really Republican district in the suburbs and exurbs west and northwest of Phoenix. It includes Sun City, Peoria, Litchfield Park and Surprise.
Trent Franks was a crackpot extremist-- and a pervert. When he got caught in a sex scandal this year, the GOP House leadership forced him to retire immediately. Not many people in Congress were sad to see him go. And his uptight suburban little district in Phoenix's West Valley has been too confused to absorb what happened to their 7-term congressman who never had a serious challenge for reelection. In fact there ws no Democrat running against him in 2016, 2014 or 2012. The district includes Sun City, Surprise, Peoria, Surprise and Litchfield Park and the PVI is R+13.
