“We won a district where we can nominate a bag of cement… and we won by 1,000 votes. That means… they are playing 50 seats deep in our infield and almost winning. What does that tell you about our midterms?”

— GOP strategist Mike Murphy, quoted by The Atlantic, on what last night’s Ohio special election says for the November midterms.

First Read: “Washington state’s top-two primary gave us a pretty good head-to-head look at how a few general election races are shaping up. With votes still being tallied in Washington’s Fifth District, Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers is currently besting Democratic rival Lisa Brown by less than 0.5 percent. In Washington’s 3rd, incumbent Jaime Herrera Beutler is running ahead of Democrat Carolyn Long just 41 percent to 37 percent. Those vote shares hardly bode well for Republicans in seats that should be solidly in the ‘likely R’ category for the GOP. The silver lining for Republicans in Washington? Dino Rossi ran well ahead of his Democratic challengers in WA-8.”

“Bottom line: If folks like Cathy McMorris Rodgers or Ann Wagner are in trouble, it’s hard to imagine a world where the GOP cavalry is going to have the resources to show up for them. And for every leak the GOP boat springs, the Democratic advantage for the midterm gets a little stronger.”

Sean Trende: “On its face, Tuesday night seemed uneventful, or even good news for the Republican Party. Aside from a few primaries here and there, the main event was the House special election in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District. Republican candidate Troy Balderson appears to have narrowly defeated Danny O’Connor (pending a count of around 3,500 provisional ballots).”

“But the truth is more complicated. The results were fully consistent with a Democratic wave in the house washing up on our shores in November. While there’s still time between now and then, there’s not a lot of time, and we’re at the point where these elections start to be very suggestive, if not fully predictive.”

First Read: “Taking last night’s primary and special election results in total, there are at least four reasons to think that — if it takes this much energy and money for Republicans to pull out one-off wins in special elections in red districts — there’s no way they’ll be able to do it in 435 places at once come November.”