There was a special election in New Hampshire on Tuesday night to fill out one of four remaining vacancies in their state house. The results are in, and if this particular canary had the beautiful plumage of the parrot in the famous Monty Python sketch, John Cleese would be announcing today that he’s here to register a complaint.

The Granite State has a large chamber, perhaps the third-largest democratic legislature in the world, with 400 representatives. And before Tuesday’s special election, the breakdown was 198 Republicans, 196 Democrats, 2 independents, and 4 vacancies. The district in question is Rockingham-District 1, which is an L-shaped district in lower east New Hampshire, just a little bit north of Manchester and closer to the Atlantic. The vacancy of this seat occurred when Benjamin Bartlett, IV had to resign due to health concerns. Being a body as large as this, resignations because of deaths, ill health, or corruption happen more that you’d think, and special elections take place all the time. This is nothing new.

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The district has a track record of performance in two major elections of late that help demonstrate the political makeup of this part of New Hampshire. In 2020, Donald Trump carried the district by .4%. By contrast, in 2022, Governor Chris Sununu carried Rockingham 1 by 22 points. It should be a Republican-leaning district, especially in a year where Joe Biden created inflation, ignores and exacerbates issues at the Southern border, crime problems spiral out of control in inner cities everywhere, administration corruption on display to everyone not currently writing for regime media to behold, foreign policy disasters one after another, and woke agenda intruding into school curricula. It should be an easy election for a Republican.

Hal Rafter is the Democrat in the race. According to the Manchester Union-Leader, the thumbnail of Rafter reads:

Former Nottingham town and school board member Hal Rafter said he favors abortion rights, environmental protection and support for public education and teachers.

Again, in a Trump-leaning district that supported Governor Sununu overwhelmingly, you’d think this particular set of issues as part of a campaign platform wouldn’t be a winning one…unless the Republican he’s running against is perceived to be a worse choice.

Jim Guzofski is a card-carrying MAGA candidate straight out of central casting. He even wears the red MAGA hat, showing it off in a print ad his campaign produced. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake has a write-up of some of the positions Guzofski has campaigned on, and you begin to see perhaps why he came up a bit short Tuesday night.

• He was a 2020 election “truther” who on Jan. 6, 2021, accused then-Vice President Mike Pence of having “betrayed” Trump by not trying to overturn the election. He later cited “prophets” who said the election was stolen and that “President Trump is still the elected president.”
• He said supporters of abortion rights desire “blood sacrifices to their god, Molech.” He also had a long history of anti-LGBTQ+ comments.
• He espoused various hard-right theories about the coronavirus and vaccine.
• He repeatedly attacked Gov. Chris Sununu (R), including calling him “toxic” and saying he was on “China’s most favored governor’s list.”

One important caveat before going forward is that A) this is a special election, so turnout isn’t the same as if there’s a governor or president at the top of the ballot, and B) it’s New Hampshire, so when I say low turnout, I mean, there were less than 3,000 votes cast in total. Low turnout elections can certainly create lots of anomalies and bizarre outcomes.

So what are we to take away from this election? Maybe nothing. It might not mean a thing looking ahead to the 2024 presidential contest. On the other hand, if you lump this result on top of what took place all across the country in 2022 with Trump-backed candidates for offices in red-leaning areas or states that could have or should have been won by Republicans, you have a pile of failed candidates that stack up like cordwood – Kari Lake and Blake Masters in Arizona, Herschel Walker in Georgia, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, Tudor Dixon in Michigan, Tim Michels in Wisconsin, and those are just the ones who ran for Senate or governor. You’d double the list if you added in House candidates endorsed by Trump who underperformed and lost. That’s a lot of canaries in a bunch of coal mines.

Governor Sununu has made the media rounds, and will continue to do so, and his message really boils down to this. Trump can’t win in 2024.

Republican Governor of NH Chris Sununu rips Donald Trump:

"All he cares about right now is getting the nomination. He can't win in November.
Independents hate it. There's no way Donald Trump will win anything above 31% of Independents, which is why Republicans as a whole will… pic.twitter.com/G2QbzVgaRK

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 27, 2023

Six months ago, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with Sununu. Maybe even three months ago. However, I think the country is in a very fluid place right now. And with all of the problems and crises piling up on top of each other, that may be enough that the anti-Biden sentiment is reaching critical mass at exactly the wrong time for the Democrats’ chances of keeping the White House in 2024. In short, Joe Biden could still beat Donald Trump, but Trump’s the only Republican in the field Biden could theoretically beat, and those chances seem to be slipping away with each successive poll. Conversely, Joe Biden may be the only Democrat Donald Trump could beat. I’m not sure Trump would fare anywhere near as well in 2024 if an aging, addled, radical Biden below 40 in every job approval poll weren’t there to be his foil.

Back to the New Hampshire special election last night. With this result, there are 198 Republicans, 197 Democrats, 2 independents, and 3 remaining vacancies. One of those vacancies – Hillsborough County District 3 to replace Democrat David Cote, is to be decided by a special election in early November. If the Democrat nominee holds that seat, we have a tie in the state chamber. There would be two vacancies after that – one previously held by a Republican, and one held by a Democrat. If past is prologue, power sharing happens, New Hampshire-style. And if one studies the list of special elections that have taken place at all levels of government over the last year or so, Democrats have just about run the table, so the candidate in the seat formerly held by a Republican is going to matter a great deal.

Could Donald Trump win the nomination? Absolutely. You’d be hard-pressed to say he wasn’t in the catbird seat right now to do just that. It’s a long, long way until Iowa, though, and even some Trump backers in the Hawkeye state are having second thoughts about supporting the former President after what he said on the abortion issue on Meet the Press Sunday with Kristen Welker.

Yes, he said it. And if you read the analysis of Ben Domenech over at the Spectator, he believes Trump knows he stepped in it, because his appearance, and the blowback to it, were immediately wallpapered over by a blizzard of Trump Truth Social posts in the last 24 hours or so.

Trump has sent out 19 articles in the past 48 hours, none of which are about his interview selling out pro-lifers to Meet the Press.

He knows he screwed up.

— Ben Domenech (@bdomenech) September 19, 2023

Could Trump win the general in November? Sure, he could. But the amount of dead canaries, or parrots, or whatever laden or unladen swallows you wish to cite for this particular analogy, are littered across the country, legs-up, looking like the floor of the wind farm on the way to Palm Springs. If November’s special election in New Hampshire goes bad, it’ll look like Thanksgiving Day at the Pinedale Mall after a WKRP holiday promotion.

Will Team MAGA keep claiming they thought turkeys could fly?