Yet as Republican strategists examine that special election, and one for a conservative Kansas seat a week earlier, they’re seeing evidence of a worrisome enthusiasm gap. In the run-up to the Georgia election, low-propensity Democratic voters — people who in years past did not consistently turn out to the polls — cast ballots at a rate nearly 7 percentage points higher than low-propensity Republicans, according to private polling by one Republican group.

In Kansas, the chasm was wider. Infrequent Democratic voters cast ballots at a rate of 9 percentage points higher than low-propensity Republicans did. The GOP nonetheless held the seat.

Former Rep. David Jolly, a Florida Republican who won a 2014 special election that was a precursor to a broader GOP sweep in that year’s midterms, said the Georgia race was rife with warnings for his party.

“It’s a verdict on Trump’s first 100 days,” Jolly said. “Ossoff simply has to speak to the president’s failure, while Republicans have to wrestle with whether and how to defend Trump’s historically low approval ratings and how closely to align with a president who at any moment could undermine Handel’s entire messaging strategy with an indefensible tweet or an outright lie.”