Democrats capped off a year of encouraging election results on Tuesday with victory in a closely watched Iowa special election. That result, coupled with gains earlier this year, as well as historic trends, points to them enjoying wider success in the 2026 midterm elections.
However, strategists in both parties have cautioned against reading too much into off-year results. With fewer voters participating, these races tend to be driven by the most engaged and partisan voters, along with heavy spending and national attention that can skew results in either direction.
The Iowa result came weeks after decisive wins in high-profile gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey and the mayoral contest in New York. Beyond the marquee contests, Democrats also logged a series of smaller-but-consequential victories, flipping two seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, winning Miami’s mayoral office for the first time in decades, and securing a redistricting victory in California after voters approved new congressional maps expected to tilt in Democrats’ favor.
The 2025 elections reshaped the balance of power inside several statehouses, delivering tangible gains beyond individual races. Democrats emerged with a commanding hold on the Virginia House not seen in generations, strengthened their majority in New Jersey’s Assembly, and dismantled GOP supermajorities in both Iowa and Mississippi. The party also notched an unexpected state Senate pickup in a deep-red corner of Pennsylvania and followed it with an upset in a Georgia district that backed President Donald Trump by double digits just one year earlier.
Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist, said early off-year elections often provide one of the clearest previews of midterm election outcomes. He pointed to the 2009 election cycle under former President Barack Obama, when Republicans scored a series of unlikely and lopsided victories that foreshadowed the GOP’s sweeping gains one year later.
That year, Chris Christie flipped New Jersey’s governorship, Bob McDonnell won the Virginia governor’s race in a landslide, and months later, Republican Scott Brown captured a Massachusetts Senate seat in a January 2010 special election, an upset that rattled Democrats. Together, those results signaled mounting voter dissatisfaction with the party in power well ahead of the GOP’s 2010 midterm “shellacking” of Democrats, when Republicans reclaimed the House and made significant Senate gains.
“What happens in off-year elections in the first year of a presidency tends to say a great deal about what’s going to happen in the midterms,” Reinish said. “By the looks of it, all the indicators point to 2025 being a very successful year for Democrats and an upward trajectory for next year.”
However, Republicans have not been shut out. Trump-backed Republican Matt Van Epps held a conservative, Nashville-area House seat, defeating a progressive Democrat by nine points. The win, however, came by a far slimmer margin than Trump’s 22-point rout in the district just one year earlier. That underperformance mirrored a broader pattern in Florida’s special House elections earlier this year, where Republicans prevailed but fell short of traditional GOP benchmarks.
Republicans argue many of Democrats’ recent victories say more about the dynamics of low-turnout races than about a lasting change in the electorate. They contend that recent margins in those environments do not always carry over once millions more voters enter the picture, and they often reflect resource advantages in isolated races.
“When Democrats have to pour national money into a state Senate district, so blue Republicans didn’t even field a candidate last cycle, that’s not coalition-building — it’s maintenance,” said Greg Manz, a GOP strategist with Direct Edge Campaigns. “By contrast, Republicans are focused on assembling durable, winning coalitions across competitive Midwestern districts, with strong, well-funded candidates positioned for success in Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and beyond in 2026.”
Republicans also point to redistricting as a wild card heading into 2026. Trump’s call for mid-cycle redistricting has prompted an unusually aggressive push by Republican-led states to redraw House maps this year, injecting uncertainty into the fight for control of Congress. Several new maps enacted in 2025 are expected to yield GOP gains, and party operatives say Republicans could end the year with a net advantage in newly favorable seats. The maps create a possibly decisive edge in a House fight likely to be settled by only a handful of races.
Still, the economic backdrop is emerging as a liability for Republicans. Voters consistently ranked the economy as the top concern across the 2025 elections, a warning sign for Trump and the GOP as they look toward the midterm elections. Democrats’ most prominent winners in 2025 centered their campaigns on affordability and cost-of-living pressures, capitalizing on an environment in which recent polls show some of the president’s weakest economic approval ratings to date.
Brad Bannon, a Democratic pollster, said Democrats’ steady overperformance in off-year elections has mirrored voter frustration with prices and broader economic direction. He noted that Trump’s approval rating has hovered in the high 30s to low 40s nationally, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans say the country is on the wrong track.
“As long as prices are high and Trump’s approval is low, that’s a godsend for Democrats,” Bannon said, adding that recent special elections show Democratic candidates running well ahead of the party’s traditional baseline. “If Republicans think these elections are false indicators, they’re whistling past the graveyard.”
That warning is shared across party lines. Republican strategist Dennis Lennox said while special elections can be unpredictable, Republicans ignore them at their peril.
“When Democrats keep outperforming baseline expectations in special and off-year races, it’s a warning light heading into a midterm that is already structurally difficult for the party in power,” Lennox said. “Ignoring it is how you lose.”
While Republicans still have pathways to hold Congress, Lennox said the margin for error is shrinking.
“Denial is not a strategy,” he said.
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“Based on history, it’s hard to see 2026 landing anywhere other than between the Democratic waves of 2006 and 2018,” Lennox said. “For Republicans, winning depends on turnout, which pushes them to nationalize races and keep Trump on the ballot.”
Strategists caution that off-year elections are signals, not destinies, with economic conditions, turnout dynamics, and campaign messaging still capable of reshaping the map before November 2026. For now, Democrats see momentum and Republicans see manageable risk, leaving less than a year for the competing interpretations to be tested.