A favorite pastime of political prognosticators is to use out-of-cycle special elections as a predictor for the next major general election, but three recent special House elections show just how useless such analysis is.

As much as we look for clues for the electorate’s feelings toward its elected politicians, special elections are never the bellwethers that we want them to be. But these off-cycle races do tell us a number of things about how the electorate engages in politics when the big ticket races are not on the ballot.