Prior to 2018, the last time the 58th saw a general election challenge was in 2008, when Republican Pat Strachota won 82% of the vote. Quite frankly, that was some pretty old data about the voting trends of the 58th.
Now, in January of 2018, we had a special election with an extremely low turnout, which gave Democrats some false hopes. Only 4,330 people voted, and Rick Gundrum beat Dennis Degenhardt, 57% to 43%. By vote counts, the margin of victory was 571 votes. That gave the democrats some false hopes about the 58th.
We saw that these were false hopes in the fall primary. 7,261 Republicans voted for Rick Gundrum in the Republican Primary. In the Democratic Primary, 2,634 Democrats voted for Dennis Degenhardt.
Last night, we saw the true make-up of the 58th, in a fairly high turnout election. 28,867 people voted (a 700% increase over the 4,330 who voted in January) and Gundrum won decisively with 71% of the vote, receiving 20, 468 votes and winning by a margin of 12,100 votes.
Whether you like this news or not, numbers don't lie, and tonight those numbers show that the 58th remains solidly and securely Republican.
Nothing I am saying is meant to in any way be disrespectful of Dennis Degenhardt, he has done a lot of good for our community and put a lot of work in this election. He had as good of a showing in this election as could be expected. All I am doing is pointing out what we now know about the 58th.
