By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: April 18, 2017 12:56 PM

All political eyes today are on the 6th U.S. House District in Georgia, a suburban Atlanta seat where everyone who runs for office, is in the business of politics or studies and writes about politics will try to glean some greater national meaning from the special election taking place there.

The seat is a longtime Republican bastion, but because President Donald Trump ran more than 20 percentage points behind 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and it has the type of highly educated, high-income population slowly trending toward Democrats, Democrats still fuming about Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory and the first three months of his presidency see a chance to make a statement.

If the Democratic candidate were to win the seat, it would surely and rightfully produce euphoria among Democrats about their chances of putting the U.S. House in play in 2018 if they can flip similar seats. A Republican victory would reaffirm that while rural, blue collar, mostly white areas have moved sharply to the Republicans, Democratic hopes about an incursion into once Republican high-income, high-education areas are still a ways off.

Reading much into these results as far as what it would mean for Michigan in 2018 looks like a big stretch, however.

The Atlantic published an interesting piece today looking at several dozen U.S. House seats similar in profile to Georgia’s 6th District based on how much worse Mr. Trump did than Mr. Romney in the seat as well as the percentage of college-educated white.

Georgia’s 6th District is at the uppermost end of that scale.

There’s one Michigan district that meets the criteria, the 11th District held by U.S. Rep. David Trott (R-Birmingham), not surprising given the high-income, high-education demographics of the district that covers well-to-do areas of Oakland and western Wayne counties, but it is on the lower end of the scale.

And a deeper look at the demographics of the two seats show they have less in common than at first glance beyond both being groupings of traditionally Republican, high-income, high-education suburbs in a major metropolitan area.

Georgia’s 6th District, with a white population of 69.8 percent, is far more diverse than Michigan’s 11th, with a white population of 80 percent. And the percentage of those born outside the United States, a bad demographic for Mr. Trump with his policies curbing immigration, is 21.3 percent in Georgia’s 6th compared to 13.6 percent in Michigan’s 11th.

While Michigan’s 11th has a relatively high number of residents with bachelor’s degrees at 46 percent compared to other Michigan congressional districts, Georgia’s 6th is at a sky-high 69.8 percent.

And maybe most of all, Michigan’s 11th simply did not seem to recoil from Mr. Trump in the way Georgia’s 6th did. While Mr. Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016 fell by 21.8 percentage points in Georgia’s 6th compared to Mr. Romney’s margin over President Barack Obama in 2012, it only dropped by 1 percentage point in Michigan’s 11th, based on data compiled by Daily Kos.

National Democrats have put Mr. Trott on their radar given that Mr. Trump ran below 50 percent in the district even as he topped Ms. Clinton there. Electing a Democrat in Michigan’s 11th will be a steep hill to climb. There is no obvious all-star Democratic candidate given the way Republicans drew the district, and Mr. Trott’s enormous personal wealth means any Democratic candidate will need tremendous resources to compete.

The 2018 elections are too far away to know yet exactly what that race will look like. But while today’s special election in Georgia (and a subsequent runoff there, if it happens) could provide some signals on how the overall 2018 national political dynamic is shaping up, it’s value as a parallel for anything in Michigan looks low.