There have been at least 8 special elections at this point and several more to go; by my count, the R’s have won 6 of the 8; losing just the one Senate Seat in Alabama and the one House Seat in PA last month. In both cases, the R candidates were flawed, or were defined by their opponents as flawed (AL). In PA, the R candidate had the personality of a tree stump; and he was running against a tall, lanky, energetic young man; and still lost by only 629 votes. The D’s needed to spend every penny of those millions of dollars for that pyrrhic victory - if just 315 people had not changed their minds since the prior election, all they would have is their seat-warmer in AL, who is sure to get blown-out in a bid for re-election.
Yep. 6 of 8 special election R seats to date were retained by R’s. There was a 9th special in CA that was a D seat that the D’s retained. There is one more scheduled special to go prior to the midterms in Ohio’s 12th on August 7 that is an R seat. There are currently 5 open seats after last night in the House. The other 4 do not (yet) have specials scheduled, the ‘special’ for Conyer’s seat in MI is scheduled for the mid-term election day in November, and will appear as a ‘regular’ open seat.
https://ballotpedia.org/Special_elections_to_the_115th_United_States_Congress_(2017-2018)
All the same, the GOP would do better than to nominate either Roy Moore or Luther Strange again. New blood and a new face.