A demoralising defeat for the Democrats

Had the Democrats won, it would have been a major blow to President Donald Trump and his Republican allies. Emily Hohler reports.

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Republican Karen Handel took 52% of the vote
(Image credit: Copyright (c) 2017 Rex Features. No use without permission.)

Special elections in the US usually "don't mean very much", says John Cassidy in The New Yorker. But Tuesday's run-off election in Georgia's "deep red" (ie, heavily Republican) sixth congressional district was an exception. That's why it came with an estimated $50m price tag, making it the most expensive House race in US history. Had the Democrats won, it would have been a "major blow" to President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, and could have hindered the progress of the controversial Republican healthcare bill and other legislation. It would also have been seen as a taster of what is to come in the 2018 mid-term elections, when, says Robert Costa in The Washington Post, the Democrats need to "flip" 24 Republican seats to take back the House majority.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.