Democrats have spent the first months of Donald Trump’s second administration wandering the political wilderness — facing record-low popularity while competing factions battle over how exactly to take on the president.
And yet, in special election after special election so far this year, Democrats are faring miles better against Republican opponents than they did last fall in Trump’s faceoff with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 16 special state legislative and congressional elections held so far this year, Democrats have bettered their margin of victory or defeat compared to the 2024 Trump-Harris battle by an average of about 11.5 points, according to data collected by the political site The Downballot. The Democrat overperformed in 14 of those 16 contests, including flipping deep-red state Senate districts in Iowa and Pennsylvania.
Those trends continued Tuesday. In Florida, though Republicans comfortably held on to two very pro-Trump House seats that were open after the president tapped their members to serve in his administration, Democrats improved on their margin of defeat in Florida’s 1st Congressional District by 22 points compared to Harris’ result there last fall, while improving by 16-points in Florida’s 6th Congressional District.
And in the high-profile Wisconsin state Supreme Court race that earned the most national attention of any of the contests held so far this year, liberal-leaning candidate Susan Crawford defeated conservative-leaning candidate Brad Schimel by 10 points, just months after Trump beat Harris by roughly a point in the presidential battleground. More than 2.36 million voters turnout out in that race, only 300,000 or so fewer than did in the 2022 midterms — a strong showing for an off-year contest.
The election results have injected a jolt of confidence in Democrats who’ve had little to celebrate since Trump’s win in November and as he and Elon Musk, his billionaire ally overseeing the rapid restructuring of the federal government in the president’s image, aggressively pursue substantial cuts to federal programs and workforces.
“I was cautious about overreacting to the first couple of specials that popped up, but [Tuesday] was a pretty clear sign that people have watched what Trump and Musk have done to our country in three short months” — and they’re “pissed,” said Brendan McPhillips, a former adviser to Harris’ campaign. “There hasn’t been a more clear example in my lifetime of billionaires out to intentionally screw over regular people.”
But special elections are difficult to use as a true gauge of voter sentiment on Trump. For several years now, Democrats have beaten expectations and outpaced Republicans in off-cycle contests, as their coalition is increasingly made up of high-engagement, high-propensity voters while Republicans have become the coalition of the less engaged. That dynamic has helped Republicans perform much more strongly in presidential years — with Trump on the ballot.
The GOP’s turnout dynamic, meanwhile, has Republicans still searching for answers on how to be more competitive when Trump is not on the ballot. And the president hinted that Democratic strength in the off-year contests played a big role in his decision to pull Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations. Stefanik represents an upstate New York district that Trump carried by 21 points last year.
A senior Republican operative, who requested anonymity to speak candidly on the election results, said that even in an unfavorable environment for Republicans — this person noted that higher income, higher education voters who’ve drifted away from the GOP coalition in recent years are more likely to vote in off-year elections — Schimel performed several points worse than he should have in Wisconsin on Tuesday. And that should throw up some red flags for Republicans, especially as polling shows increased voter concerns around Trump’s handling of the economy.
“Donald Trump’s image rating is still pretty good,” this person said. “But Donald Trump’s image rating relative to where it was on Election Day in 2024 is off, and it’s the first time in his history that he’s been upside down on the economy. I think that matters, and I think there’s a lot of uncertainty around his policies, and voters are concerned about it.”
Trump advisers said they were not concerned by Tuesday’s results. But prominent Trump allies did not seek to sugarcoat the recent performances after Schimel’s defeat. Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and media personality, called on Trump boosters to “realize and appreciate that we are the LOW PROP party now.”
“The party has been remade,” Kirk tweeted. “Special elections and off-cycle elections will continue to be a problem without a change of strategy. … Let Wisconsin be a wakeup call. Let it be a call to return to the frontlines. We won in November, but to save the Republican [sic] we must string together multiple victories and that starts in 2026.”
Vice President JD Vance, meanwhile, said the results highlighted what’s become a persistent issue for the right.
“The political problem on the Republican side of the aisle is how to get our base to vote in off-cycle elections,” he tweeted. “We’ve seen the establishment (finally) accept Donald Trump’s leadership of the Republican Party. Now it’s time to try to actually learn from his political success.”
Yet, much of the focus of these early special elections, as well as in the Wisconsin judicial race, has actually been on Musk, not Trump. It’s a dynamic Musk himself has invited by getting intimately involved in the elections, whether promoting candidates online or spending money to boost them amid his stint as a central figure in Trump’s administration.
Democrats also made Musk a central target of their messaging at a time when his favorability ratings are considerably lower than Trump’s. An NBC News poll last month found that 39% of voters hold favorable views of the tech tycoon while 51% view him negatively.
Musk held a campaign event in Wisconsin days before the election and even handed over million-dollar checks to voters. At the same time, his political group, America PAC, sought to turn out voters on Schimel’s behalf. A person familiar with Musk’s effort said the defeat won’t deter Musk from being involved in the midterms, adding that his political operation knew it was fighting an uphill battle in the race.
But others on the right said that while Musk was not a determinative factor in this race or others, they did not see his involvement as a net benefit.
“Elon is a terrible surrogate and doesn’t get voters out the polls,” a senior Senate GOP aide said, adding they believed the Wisconsin contest was winnable. “The giving-out-checks gimmick doesn’t seem very effective. His political operation is pretty good apparently but having him front and center just activates Dems.”
Additionally, the senior Republican operative said it was “probably a mistake” for Musk to tie himself so closely to the election.
“It probably did matter, because he’s less popular than the president, and he’s universally known,” this person said, adding, “You could see it in the polling.”
Yet, the senior Senate GOP aide said that while Republicans still need to figure out how to get their voters engaged without Trump on the ballot ahead of next year’s midterm elections, they see Democrats making a mistake by zooming in too much on Musk.
“Dems also continue to have a weird issue where they somehow can’t attack Trump directly,” this person said, noting last year’s focus on Project 2025 and the more recent attacks aimed at Musk. “Going after Elon works when he inserts himself into the race proactively but it seems like they’re going to make the mistake of running against Elon now instead of Trump. It might actually even be genius from Trump to let Elon take all the arrows and then just drop him when it starts hurting his own numbers.”
Stella Sexton — co-campaign manager for Democrat James Malone, who won an upset victory over Republican Josh Parsons for a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, state Senate seat — said she felt Musk ended up boosting Malone’s bid. In the closing days of the race, Musk promoted a tweet warning that Republicans could lose the seat. After Malone won, Musk wrote: “Damn.”
“The support from Elon Musk probably ultimately helped us, because it got more eyes on the race,” Sexton said. “And obviously Elon Musk is very unpopular right now.”
Sexton said their strategy focused on turning out Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who were looking for a way to register their frustration with the government right now. Malone’s bid gave them that avenue. They saw Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s narrow victory in this state Senate district in his 2022 gubernatorial run as a model — and Malone ended up running slightly ahead of Shapiro.
“We did not nationalize the race, except to say that you have a chance to vote for a Democrat, and by doing that, you’re going to send a message,” she said, adding, “And people were very enthusiastic about that.”
In an interview, Malone said he was focused on the local angle of his bid and listening to the concerns of voters as he went door to door. With his victory, he became the first Democrat to win a state Senate seat in Lancaster County since the 19th century. Trump carried his district by 16 points in November.
“It was much more about local power,” Malone said. “Lancastrian citizens wanted to be heard, and they felt like I was giving them that chance.”
Malone and his campaign took inspiration from Mike Zimmer, a Democrat who flipped a state Senate district in Iowa in January when he defeated his Republican opponent by 4 points. Trump carried Zimmer’s district by 25 points in November.
Zimmer told NBC News he was “exhausted” after Iowa Democrats “got our butts handed to us” in November, adding it was “a long conversation” with his family about whether to even run in the first place. He expected an onslaught of Republican attacks if he did, particularly related to transgender issues. That never materialized.
“I think they just got cocky, and they thought that they could run anybody that they wanted with an R by their name, and they were going to win,” he said, adding he was personally unaware by just how many points Trump had just won the district by. “I really was a little taken aback, going, ‘Oh, wow, that was a 25-point swing.’”
Jack Doyle, a Democratic operative who’s worked on races in Pennsylvania, said that even though Democrats have done well in special elections in recent years, he feels the recent results offer “proof that the backlash against Trump is starting much earlier than a usual presidential term.”
And as Trump spent Wednesday announcing sweeping and steep global tariffs — fulfilling a key campaign pledge on trade but risking a spike in prices in the process — Doyle said there’s further risk for Republicans.
“He’s not acting as president along the same lines as he ran his race,” he said. “He isn’t trying to sell his inflation-reducing agenda and having trouble breaking through. He’s literally saying he doesn’t care about rising costs and [is] leaning into Musk cutting services.”
