Democrats are excitedly touting the results of Tuesday night’s elections, contending they show that the public is tiring of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk. They should instead take a page from Larry David and curb their enthusiasm.
The question is not whether the Democrats had a relatively good night — they did. Their candidates cut the Republican margin in two Florida House special elections by more than half compared to Trump’s 2024 margin, and they easily won the hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
The real question is why they had a good night. If they did well because they were persuading prior Trump backers to vote for Democrats, that would be a good sign for their 2026 chances. But that’s not what mostly happened.
Democrats have overperformed their expectations in special and spring elections for most of the Trump era. Their increasing tilt toward highly educated white people, who tend to vote more regularly, means the lower the turnout, the higher the share of Democrats in the special election electorate.
The June 2017 special election for South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District is a case in point. Turnout was extremely low in this historically safe GOP seat, a mere 18.34%. The Democrat held Republican Ralph Norman to a mere 51%, a 3-point margin.
The same two candidates squared off in the 2018 midterm elections. That election was the GOP’s worst in over a decade, costing it 40 House seats. But here, the higher turnout for a general election propelled Norman to a comfortable victory of 15.5 points.
This happened to a lesser extent in another House special election in the 2018 cycle. Ohio’s 12th District was a historically Republican seat, but GOP nominee Troy Balderson barely beat Democrat Danny O’Connor by less than a point in August.
Fast forward to November of the same year when the two men squared up for a rematch. Turnout leaped from 208,000 to over 342,000, and Balderson expanded his margin to more than 4 points.
That dynamic was at play Tuesday evening in Florida and, to a lesser degree, Wisconsin.
The electorates in the two Florida seats were significantly less Republican-leaning than those in the 2024 general election, according to the New York Times. The electorate in the closely watched Florida 6th District race was 5 points less Republican than in the 2024 general election. The contest in Florida’s 1st District was even more pro-Democratic, with an electorate that was 10 points less GOP than in November.
The Wisconsin electorate also tilted to the left. Democrats who voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris turned out much more than Republicans who voted for Trump, according to a New York Times analysis. This fits a long-standing pro-Democratic turnout pattern in Wisconsin’s April Supreme Court elections.
There were also some race-specific effects that likely boosted progressive Susan Crawford in that contest. The Democratic-backed candidate for state superintendent of public instruction beat her GOP-supported challenger by less than 6 points, much less than Crawford’s 10-point margin. Given that abortion was an issue in the court race but not the education one, it’s quite plausible that pro-abortion Trump supporters voted leftward for the court but rightward for the superintendent.
The midterm electorates even in Wisconsin will be significantly larger than they were on Tuesday. That will redound to the GOP’s benefit up and down the ballot.
That doesn’t mean the party should rest easy. Midterm outcomes are directly tied to a president’s job approval rating. Analysis of the last four midterm elections shows that the president’s party should expect to garner most of the vote from those who approve of the president’s performance. They will be lucky, though, to get over 10% of those who disapprove.
That’s true regardless of which party occupies the White House. In 2018, House Republicans got 88% of the vote from people who approved of Trump’s job but only 8% of those who disapproved. In 2022, Democrats got 94% of people who liked then-President Joe Biden but only 12% of those who did not.
That means savvy observers will be looking at Trump’s job approval ratings rather than extrapolating from comparatively low-turnout special election results.
2026 MIDTERM ELECTIONS BEGIN TO TAKE SHAPE AS DEMOCRATS LOOK TO BREAK UP GOP TRIFECTA
Republicans will have a decent night in 2026 if Trump’s job approval rating is 46% or higher on Election Day. It will be a good night if it approaches his current 48% average approval — and it will be a terrible night if it reaches Biden’s 44% level or drops even lower.
It’s fun to get high on your own supply, but it’s not very useful to do that as a serious political strategist or analyst. Democrats misread the 2024 electorate by thinking their own biases in favor of abortion rights and the purported danger Trump posed to democracy would move swing voters. If they believe their own spin regarding the special election results, they could be making an even worse mistake come next year.
Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a veteran political analyst. He is the host of Beyond the Polls, a podcast about American elections and campaigns.