Specials

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Ryan Deto at Axios:

With all precincts reported but still some ballots left to count, Democrats appear to have flipped a conservative state House district north of Pittsburgh.

The latest: Democrat Brandon Dukes led by 88 votes against Republican Scott Timko on Tuesday night with over 99% of the votes counted, according to the Associated Press.

Provisional and overseas ballots still need to be counted. AP had not called the race as of early Wednesday morning.

Why it matters: The apparent flip doesn’t impact Democrats' narrow majority in the state House, but it boosts the party’s momentum heading into the midterms, where Dems are hoping to take control of Pennsylvania.

The big picture: Dukes overcame a district that voted for President Trump by over 18 points in 2024, one of the Dems’ best special election performances of the cycle.Democrat James Malone narrowly flipped a state Senate seat in Lancaster County in 2025, overcoming a 15-point Trump district.

In April, Elaine Kamarck, Jordan Muchnick, and Nikola Misetic wrote at Brookings:

Special elections for state legislative seats were also instructive. Most of these vacancies resulted from incumbent resignations, in some cases to seek other offices, or deaths. In Mississippi, three of the districts that flipped had been redistricted.

One of the most notable contests took place in Florida’s House District 87, which includes Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s home. The district was held by a Trump-endorsed Republican and ended up in the hands of a first-time Democratic candidate. The result surprised many, perhaps including the president, who voted by mail in the contest.

To date, 12 state legislative seats have flipped from Republican to Democratic control in special elections. When accounting for Democratic gains in the 2025 off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the total number of flips from Republican to Democratic is 30. By contrast, no seats have flipped in the opposite direction. Democrats have overperformed by 4.5 percentage points on average.

If these races are viewed alongside the substantial 2025 Democratic wins in New Jersey and Virginia, the midterm outlook appears favorable for Democrats. The party picked up seats in Congress and state legislatures, won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and secured a mayoral race in Waukesha, Wisconsin—a city where Republicans had won for years.

Family Succession

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The sudden death of Lindsey Graham was a shock to the system.

A total of 48 women have been elected or appointed to fill congressional vacancies created by the deaths of their husbands, 8 to the U.S. Senate and 40 to the U. S. House of Representatives.

Less often, other family members have succeeded deceased lawmakers:  According to Claude:

Vetted father-son and father-daughter congressional successions, excluding edge cases

Here's a rundown, organized by relationship, of family members other than widows who directly succeeded a deceased House member or senator (via special election or gubernatorial appointment):

Sister succeeding brother: Darline Graham Nordone was appointed just this week (July 13, 2026) by South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to fill the Senate seat of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died suddenly on July 12. Graham never married or had children; McMaster's pick to serve out the remainder of his term, which runs through January 2027, is his adopted-and-raised younger sister. She's set to be the first woman to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate. CBS News 

• Sons succeeding fathers: John Dingell Jr. won a 1955 special election to succeed his father, John Dingell Sr., in Michigan's 15th District — beginning a Dingell family run in that seat that lasted decades. Wikipedia: John Dingell
• Donald Payne Jr. won a 2012 special election to succeed his father, Donald Payne Sr., in New Jersey's 10th District. Payne won the general election 56-44 percent and never faced a competitive race again. Wikipedia: Donald Payne Jr. Insideelections

Daughters succeeding fathers:

• Adelita Grijalva was elected in 2025 to succeed her father, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), after his death — though her swearing-in was delayed several weeks by Speaker Mike Johnson during a government shutdown. House.gov coverage / AP via WSB-TV WSB-TV
• Marcye Scott is currently running (special election set for July 28, 2026) to succeed her father, the late Rep. David Scott (D-GA), who died in April 2026 — not yet resolved, but worth flagging since it's live right now. WSB-TV

Daughter succeeding mother: Erica Lee Carter won a November 2024 special election to succeed her mother, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), after Jackson Lee's death from pancreatic cancer — the first (and so far only) daughter to succeed her mother in Congress. House.gov: Family Firsts U.S. House of Representatives

Trump Clout in IN Primrary, Bad Sign for GOP in Michigan

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Susan Page at USA TODAY:

He's still the boss.

President Donald Trump is beset by rising gas prices, falling approval ratings and an unpopular war in Iran. But in the Indiana primary May 5 he demonstrated his continued grip on the Republican Party by delivering a thumping to a half-dozen state senators who defied his demands to redraw congressional lines.

Of seven GOP senators who earned his ire, five lost their party's nominations to challengers the president had endorsed, with one race still too close to call.

It was an unlikely test, and an expensive one, in contests that typically attract little attention.

"Trump is perhaps not as popular in my district as he once was," Spencer Deery, one of the incumbent senators, told CNN while the votes were being counted, "but he is still overwhelmingly popular."

Patrick Svitek at CNN:

Michigan Democrats on Tuesday won a special election for a state Senate seat in another party over-performance after the district was almost evenly divided in the last presidential election.

Democratic firefighter Chedrick Greene defeated GOP lawyer Jason Tunney for a seat to determine whether Democrats would retain control of the state Senate. With an estimated 93% of votes in, Greene led Tunney by 19 points.

 

Florida Specials

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Khaleda Rahman at Newsweek:

President Donald Trump faced a bruising election night on Tuesday, as two Democrats flipped seats in reliably red Florida and the North Carolina Senate leader the president had endorsed for reelection conceded defeat in his primary race..

... 

The results serve as another sign of trouble for Republicans, who are embarking on a difficult campaign to keep control of both the House and Senate in November’s midterm elections. Historically, the party in power usually gives up seats in midterm elections. Trump has urged the GOP to redraw congressional maps across the country to give Republican candidates an advantage ahead of November's elections, although the effort that could end up backfiring.

Democrats have celebrated Tuesday’s victories in Florida as another signal that voters are turning against Trump and Republicans. They are the latest in a series of special election victories for Democrats across the country since the president returned to the White House more than a year ago

In Florida, Democrat Emily Gregory won a special election to represent the state’s 87th House district, flipping a seat that includes Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The president carried the district by double digits in the 2024 election.

Trump had endorsed Gregory's Republican rival, Jon Maples. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday, he urged voters to turn out to vote, saying Maples was backed “by so many of my Palm Beach County friends.”

Also in Florida, Democrat Brian Nathan declared victory in a tight race to replace Republican Jay Collins in State Senate District 14, after Collins was tapped by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to serve as his lieutenant governor.

The win is a major upset in a Tampa-area district that Collins won by almost 10 percentage points in 2022 and where there are about 22,000 more registered Republican voters than Democrats.

The two seats are the 29th and 30th seats that Democrats have flipped from Republican control since Trump returned to office, Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement to Newsweek.

 

Texas Special Elections

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  Despite D weakness in some polls, off-year and special elections have turned out badly for the GOP.

Brianna Tucker at WP:

Democrats narrowed Republicans’ U.S. House majority and flipped a state Senate seat on conservative terrain in a pair of Saturday special election runoffs with national implications.

Democrat Christian Menefee won the special election runoff Saturday for Texas’s 18th Congressional District, paring House Republicans’ slim advantage by securing a long-vacant seat in a heavily Democratic area. In a second election runoff in Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth, Democrats won a notable upset, with Taylor Rehmet defeating Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a district where President Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024.

In special elections and other local races over the past year, Democrats have largely outperformed Republicans. National Democratic leaders have pointed to the results, including Rehmet’s win, along with sweeping victories in last fall’s elections, as reasons for optimism headed into this fall’s midterms. Democrats are hoping in November to capitalize on anger at Trump’s agenda. Republicans will try to defy recent political trends and hold on to their control of Congress.

J. David Goodman at NYT:

Republican leaders, concerned that a defeat could bring an influx of Democratic investment into Texas races in 2026, tried to rally support for Ms. Wambsganss. She received an endorsement from President Trump and the backing of prominent conservative leaders in Texas, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. The chairman of the Republican National Committee met with Ms. Wambsganss last week.

The unusually timed election attracted low turnout in a district of Tarrant County that includes portions of Fort Worth and its northern suburbs. Mr. Patrick, in the run up to the race, pleaded with Republicans to vote in the special election, which fell on a Saturday. Mr. Trump also urged voters to vote in a social media post on Friday.

“You can win this election for Leigh, who has my complete and total endorsement,” Mr. Trump wrote. 

Sometimes it's easy to dismiss upsets in state legislative elections because the constituencies are tiny.  Not so here: with 940k residents apiece, Texas State Senate districts are more populous than US House districts and even some states. About 94k people voted in this one, a decent turnout for a special in January. 

See Ballotpedia on 2025 and 2026 specials. 

Vacancies and Margins

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

MIA MCCARTHY, CALEN RAZOR and BENJAMIN GUGGENHEIM at POLITICO:

First, the GOP Conference’s long-planned, day-long policy retreat Tuesday at the Kennedy Center — intended to build unity around a legislative agenda in a midterm election year — was shaken by news of Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s unexpected death and Rep. Jim Baird’s hospitalization from a car accident.

It brought into stark relief the major math challenges House Republicans now face. LaMalfa’s passing brings the balance of the House to 218-213. And as long as Baird is out recovering, Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose a single GOP vote on party-line legislative business on the chamber floor.

“We keep saying we are one breath away from the minority — that’s more true today than ever,” one House Republican told Meredith Lee Hill.

Lindsey Holden at Politico:

Newsom has 14 days to schedule a special election, which would take place by mid-May unless the governor holds off until the June 2 primary.

The new congressional boundaries California voters approved in November don’t kick in until that primary. This creates a scenario in which a short-timer elected by LaMalfa’s current constituents could serve out the end of his term, followed by a representative running in the newly drawn, more Democratic, district.

Or, one candidate could thread the needle of both districts and serve the two terms back to back. However, that situation is fairly unlikely, considering the sharp red-to-blue swing Prop 50 will initiate.

California elections expert Paul Mitchell, who was involved in drawing the new maps, predicted in an X post that Newsom will schedule the special election in March, with a June runoff, or align it with the midterm primary with an August runoff.

A Blue Week

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  This year's elections have turned out badly for the GOP.

Julia Manchester at The Hill:

Republicans are feeling spooked by recent special elections losses and underperformances in party strongholds, as the White House ramps up President Trump’s presence on the campaign trail ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

On Tuesday, Democrats flipped Miami’s mayoral office for the first time in nearly 30 years and won a conservative-leaning state House district in Georgia that Trump carried by 12 points last year.

Those victories came after Republicans gave up ground to Democrats in a special election for Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District last week and lost by wide margins in Virginia and New Jersey’s gubernatorial races last month.

Republicans note that while the off-year gubernatorial losses were not necessarily a surprise, upsets in GOP strongholds such as Miami and the Georgia state House district have them on edge.

“Republicans losing in Republican areas? That’s a different story. I think that’s got people freaking out,” one former Trump White House staffer said

Andrew Egger at The Bulwark:

“It’s not a secret. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way.”

“We are facing almost certain defeat.”

“The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard.”

“You hit the nail on the head. This is an absolute disaster. No matter what party is in power, they usually get crushed in the midterms.”

These pessimistic assessments of Republicans’ chances in next year’s midterms are the sort of thing you’d expect to hear from disgruntled GOP operatives outside the MAGA camp. This week, however, they’ve been coming from someone way crazier: Joe Gruters, the Trump-diehard chair of the Republican National Committee, who has been barnstorming conservative radio this week.1

Gruters isn’t throwing Trump under the bus. Quite the opposite: As Democrats overperform in special election after special election and Republican confidence in the midterms craters, he’s trying to set expectations low—way low. After all, he says, the guys in power nearly always lose the midterms. And as once-unimaginable cracks have begun spiderwebbing across the MAGA coalition, he’s making a specific case to his party: “The only person that could bring the nose up and help us win is the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.”

Still, it’s remarkably abnormal to see the chair of the institutional Republican party—the head of the party’s campaign apparatus!—openly predict doom for his candidates. It risks further depressing GOP voters and encouraging lawmakers to retire early. And, beyond that, it’s far from clear that the Republicans who actually need to get elected next year share Gruters’s assessment of how to fix their electoral predicament.

This week, I spoke to a number of swing-state GOP operatives about Trump and the midterm environment. And they were pretty blunt. To them, the biggest reason Republicans seem bound for disaster isn’t historical midterm trends. It’s the world the president has built for them to run in—particularly when it comes to affordability. (To encourage them to speak openly, including in ways that contradict top-down GOP messaging, we agreed not to disclose their names.)

“His message sucks. It’s absolute trash. ‘Affordability is a Democrat hoax’??? Give me a break,” said one strategist, a veteran of presidential and congressional campaigns. “It’s the non-college-educated version of the Biden message, and we saw how well that worked. . . . Nobody believes the economy and particularly affordability is getting better.”

Mike Johnson's Bad Week

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Annie Karni at NYT:

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York called Speaker Mike Johnson a habitual liar.

Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has told people she is so frustrated with the Louisiana Republican and sick of the way he has run the House — particularly how women are treated there — that she is planning to huddle with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia next week to discuss following her lead and retiring early from Congress.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has gone around Mr. Johnson in a bid to force a vote he has declined to schedule on a bill to ban members of Congress from stock trading.

Less than a year out from midterm elections in which Republicans’ vanishingly small majority is at stake, Mr. Johnson’s grasp on his gavel appears weaker than ever, as members from all corners of his conference openly complain about his leadership. Some predict that he may not last as the speaker for the rest of this term.

...

Ms. Stefanik told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that Mr. Johnson would not have the support to remain speaker if a vote were held tomorrow, adding that disaffection with him among Republicans was “that widespread.”

Ms. Stefanik declined to speak on the record for this article.

Mr. Johnson declined to comment, as well. But a senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of prolonging an intraparty feud, said that after Mr. Johnson had provided Ms. Stefanik with office space and a budget for what the aide described as “a fake job and a fake title,” he would have expected her to be more gracious.

 Kate Santaliz and Hans Nichols at Axios:

President Trump didn't tell Speaker Mike Johnson that he was granting a "full and unconditional PARDON" to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) before announcing it on Truth Social this morning, Johnson told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump's pardon boosts one of House Republicans' top political targets — and could hamper GOP efforts to protect their razor-thin majority in next year's midterms.

"I didn't know anything about it," Johnson told Axios Wednesday afternoon.
Asked if he was surprised by Trump's pardon, Johnson said: "I think he had talked about that since last spring. It shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone. But no, I didn't discuss it with him."

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (N.C.) told Axios that he found out about Trump's pardon on X.The pardon "certainly makes it tougher" for the GOP to flip Cuellar's South Texas seat, Hudson said.


Driving the news: Trump not only pardoned Cuellar — he praised him, calling the Texas Democrat "highly respected" and "beloved."

Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

President Trump and Republicans got a win on Tuesday night — and it set off alarm bells for the party.

Just like every other congressional contest held this year, the Tennessee special election for the House tilted sharply in the Democratic Party’s direction compared with the 2024 election. The Trump-backed Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, won by nine percentage points in a ruby-red seat that Mr. Trump had romped through a year earlier by 22 points.

That 13-point swing to the left — if it continues into 2026 — threatens to be an undertow strong enough to subsume a range of Republicans in less lopsidedly red seats and deliver Democrats a comfortable House majority next year.

Note: the D candidate was too liberal for the district.  A moderate would have done even better.

 

A Special Election in NY

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics.  It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Jared Gans at The Hill:

Democrat Sam Sutton has won a special election for a New York state Senate seat, repelling Republican efforts to flip the conservative-leaning district, Decision Desk HQ has projected.

Sutton, a businessman who has led a nonprofit for years, defeated Republican Nachman Caller, an attorney who previously ran for state Assembly a decade ago. His win keeps the seat in Democratic hands after the resignation of former state Sen. Simcha Felder, who resigned from his position last month to take a seat on the New York City Council.

The result seemed uncertain as Felder is a conservative Democrat who previously caucused with the state GOP conference for years. Felder repeatedly ran unopposed on the party line for the Democratic and Republican parties.

State Senate District 22 encompasses a part of Brooklyn that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump in the November presidential election.

But the district includes a heavily Orthodox Jewish area. Sutton has close ties to the Sephardic community as a co-leader of the Sephardic Community Federation.

Vibe Shift

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Tal Axelrod at Axios:

The verdict is in: President Donald Trump's voters are lively when he's running for the White House. They're downright lethargic when he's not.

Why it matters: This is not just the assessment of Democrats. It's coming straight from the vice president and leaders of the MAGA movement. And it can have massive implications for the results of key gubernatorial races this year and for next year's midterms.

Catch up quick: Brad Schimel, the conservative candidate in Wisconsin's Supreme Court race, lost by 10 points in a 50-50 state. Trump endorsed Brad Schimel, and Elon Musk bankrolled millions of dollars in ads and events, swooping into Wisconsin the weekend before Election Day to juice turnout.While Republicans won two House special elections in Florida by about 15 points, those were drops from over 30-point margins in the same districts just last November.

Zoom out: Low-propensity, working-class voters helped fuel Trump's 2024 win.But MAGA luminaries are fretting that those same voters only turn out when Trump's name is on the ballot, making the GOP base less intimidating in off-year races and putting narrow congressional majorities at risk.

Vice President Vance wrote on X: "The political problem on the Republican side of the aisle is how to get our base to vote in off-cycle elections. 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."

Holly Otterbein at Politico:

While many of the president’s allies are sympathetic to his argument that the tariffs will encourage companies to invest in domestic manufacturing and production, they fear that imposing new trade barriers will cause short-term economic harm, drive up prices, potentially throw the U.S. into a recession, and jeopardize Republicans’ chances of hanging onto control of Congress in the midterms.

Just four in 10 voters view Trump’s handling the economy and trade favorably, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in late March.

 

Wisconsin and Florida: Bad Signs for GOP

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Alex Isenstadt at  Axios:

The GOP also survived a late scare in a Florida special election. But losing in Wisconsin — letting Democrats keep their 4-3 court majority — has major ramifications for voting and abortion rights, along with future House redistricting.Republicans kept the House seat in Florida formerly held by national security adviser Mike Waltz, with Randy Fine holding off Democrat Josh Weil.

Republicans also held the Florida seat formerly held by Rep. Matt Gaetz before he resigned from Congress in November. Jimmy Patronis defeated Democratic candidate Gay Valimont.

1. 2026 looks scary for MAGA without Trump on the ballot.Republican House candidates in Florida fell far short of Trump's performance in November. The margins of victory for Patronis and Fine were about half of the margins for Waltz and Gaetz.

...

Republicans lost in Wisconsin, even with $25 million poured in by Elon Musk, the wealthiest person in the world and the face of DOGE. Musk campaigned in Wisconsin and cast the race in apocalyptic terms.

2. Democrats are flooding cash into races

In FL-1, Patronis was outraised 3-1.
In FL-6, Fine was outraised by nearly 10-1.
In Wisconsin, Crawford outraised Schimel nearly 2-1.

3. Republicans dodged a bullet in Florida. Last week Republicans were sweating the race for Waltz's seat, where a poll conducted by Trump strategist Tony Fabrizio showed Fine narrowly trailing. But Fine won by 15 points.  Florida defeat would have raised alarms among Republicans about the political impact of Trump's agenda. Speaker Mike Johnson's narrow House majority won't shrink, and there won't be headlines about a special election shocker.

Trump Doublecrosses Stefanik

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Hans Nichols at Axios:

President Trump's dramatic rug pull of Rep. Elise Stefanik's (R-N.Y.) UN ambassador nomination has given House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) a new series of headaches.

Why it matters: Johnson has to reassure GOP lawmakers after their president said he's nervous about a Trump +20 district.He also must reintegrate Stefanik, who was planning to bolt town next week, into a leadership lineup that's full.

Stefanik was crushed and scrambled to reverse Trump's decision before he announced it on Truth Social, according to people familiar with the matter.

But for Trump, the margins were too close for comfort.

Driving the news: In explaining his decision, Trump undercut the NRCC line that there was no risk of the GOP losing any special elections this year."With a very tight Majority, I don't want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise's seat," Trump said on Truth Social.
Republicans are "afraid they will lose the special election to replace her," Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Thursday.

What we're hearing: Stefanik's congressional staff has mostly resigned. She surrendered her slot on the House Intelligence Committee and had one foot out of Washington. Her Instagram was a showcase of that extended goodbye.She'll have to slink back to the House and reintegrate herself into Johnson's leadership structure, even as Trump dangled the possibility of joining his administration down the line.

Inside the White House, there's a view that under Trump there isn't necessarily a need for an ambassador to the United Nations, according to a person familiar with the matter.

House Race Tea Leaves

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.  Democrats have  tended to do well in special elections during the past two years.

Politico Playbook:

If last night’s election returns were going to provide any surprises, they weren’t supposed to come out of Ohio’s 6th Congressional District.

In a special election race that got basically zero national attention, Republican state Sen. MICHAEL RULLI was thought certain to rout Democrat MICHAEL KRIPCHAK, a former Air Force officer and once-aspiring actor who quit a Youngstown-area restaurant job to run for Congress.

DONALD TRUMP, after all, had won the blue-collar, mostly rural district previously represented by GOP Rep. BILL JOHNSON by 29 points in 2022. Furthermore, Rulli raised nearly 30 times more than Kripchak’s shoestring budget.

Rulli, in the end, managed only a not-quite-10-point victory over Kripchak — a roughly 20-point swing toward Democrats versus Trump’s 2020 showing. More from AP

SPECIAL ELECTION TRACKER 

Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell at WP:

Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) defeated a primary challenger last night who had pledged to join the House Freedom Caucus, dealing a blow to the hard-right group’s efforts to expand its ranks.

More than a thousand miles away, North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak easily beat another Republican who said he would join the Freedom Caucus, Rick Becker, in the race for the seat Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R) gave up to run for governor.

The results are the latest repudiation of hard-right candidates in GOP primaries this year, after Reps. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.) and Mike Bost (R-Ill.) narrowly beat challengers to their right.

Timmons’s and Fedorchak’s victories are also a less than encouraging sign for Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), the Freedom Caucus chairman who is facing a tough primary of his own next week.

Good and several other Freedom Caucus members had endorsed state Rep. Adam Morgan — who lost to Timmons 52 percent to 48 percent — and Becker. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who isn’t a member of the caucus but is often aligned with it, also backed them.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) also easily survived her primary, defeating two challengers.

She was the first of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership to face a primary challenger. (One of the others, Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), resigned in March, and another, Rep. Matt Rosendale (Mont.), isn’t running for reelection.)

Mace said before the results came in that she wanted her victory to embarrass McCarthy.

“I hope I drive Kevin McCarthy crazy,” she told the New York Times.

Abortion Wins for Democrats, Vulnerabilities for Republicans

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Abortion was a big issue in the 2022 midterm. It will be a big issue in 2024.

Colby Itkowitz at WP:

Democrat Marilyn Lands on Tuesday decisively won an Alabama state House seat in a long-held Republican district, notching a special-election victory after centering her campaign on promoting access to abortion and in vitro fertilization.

Lands’s win was the latest in a string of Democratic victories around reproductive rights after abortion rights advocates experienced a huge blow nearly two years ago. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — which had established a constitutional right to abortion — in 2022, Democrats have found success in battleground elections and ballot referendums by focusing heavily on protecting abortion rights and running against GOP opposition to them.

SCOOPLET: Speaker Mike Johnson railed against “chemical abortions” in a previously-unreported 2020 interview. He criticized those who mail “a chemical that will induce the abortion, you know, a pill or a syringe … We have to be very vigilant about that.” https://t.co/dk7cgjQHNX pic.twitter.com/fR5DecfDDS

— Daniel Lippman (@dlippman) March 27, 2024

The last precinct is in & Democrat Marilyn Lands has flipped Alabama's #HD10 in a 62-37 landslide! That even beats Doug Jones' 23-point margin in 2017. We've just updated our special elections Big Board with the numbers https://t.co/aR9PkU0n3G pic.twitter.com/Vh4W3AxL7t

— Daily Kos Elections (@DKElections) March 27, 2024

Andrew Solender at Axios:

House Democrats are seizing on an anti-IVF push by a group of right-wing House Republicans to accuse the GOP of trying to "have it both ways," Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Republicans have painstakingly tried to distance from an Alabama Supreme Court ruling that restricted access to fertility services.

The backdrop: Four right-wing House Freedom Caucus members wrote to Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough last week voicing "strong objections" to a policy expanding IVF access to veterans.

NY3 and PA: A Good Night for Democrats

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. 

The past year has been very good for Democrats.

In a special election last night, Tom Suozzi won NY3, the seat that George Santos had held.  Despite predictions of a "nailbiter," the result was a comfortable 54-46.

Hannah Knowles and Julie Zauzmer Weil at WP:

National issues dominated the campaign, making Tuesday’s vote this year’s first high-profile test of the parties’ messages on abortion, the economy and, above all, immigration. Suozzi represented the area for six years previously and campaigned as a moderate who wanted to work across the aisle. But with New York City struggling to absorb more than 100,000 migrants arriving from the southern border, much of the campaign centered on what polling suggests is Democrats’ toughest issue.

Democrat Jim Prokopiak was also projected to win a Tuesday special election for a state House seat in Pennsylvania, building his party’s narrow edge in a chamber that until recently was deadlocked 101-101. He beat Candace Cabanas after tying her to Trump and what he called “extremists” in the GOP, echoing national Democrats’ 2024 message.

In New York, Suozzi’s victory capped a long list of Democratic wins in recent special elections, which have showcased the party’s ability to turn out its base and tap into anger at GOP-backed abortion restrictions since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Democrats spent millions of dollars attacking Pilip’s “pro-life” stance even though she said she would not support a national ban on abortion.

The victory also validated Suozzi’s decision to invest heavily in countering the GOP on immigration, suggesting that Democrats in tight races can benefit from talking tougher on the border and highlighting Republicans’ abrupt abandonment of a bipartisan deal on the matter negotiated in Congress. Biden, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) and other Democrats have similarly sought to go on offense on immigration by criticizing the deal’s failure.

Trump, of course, dishonestly blamed the R candidate:

 

As expected, Trump blames everyone but himself for the election loss tonight. Trump claimed Mazi Pilip lost because “she didn't endorse me.”

This is a lie. Pilip said she voted for Trump in 2020 and endorsed him for the 2024 election. #NY03 pic.twitter.com/aiPuizqBuM

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) February 14, 2024

More on Specials

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and local elections. 

Nathaniel Rakich at ABC writes about the D win in a NH special election:

“Hang on,” you might be saying. “Only 2,800 people voted in this election.” (New Hampshire House districts are really tiny.) “Does that really mean anything?” On its own, no — any single special election can be influenced by any number of factors, including candidate quality or parochial issues. But Democrats have been posting special-election overperformances of that magnitude all year long, in all kinds of districts. And on average, they have won by margins 11 points higher than the weighted relative partisanship of their districts.

That’s more than just an impressive streak — it’s a potential sign of a Democratic wave election in 2024. In each of the past three election cycles, a party’s average overperformance in all special elections in a given cycle has been a close match for the eventual House popular vote in the eventual general election — albeit a couple of points better for Democrats.

 And according to Daily Kos Elections (albeit using a different methodology), the correlation between special-election results and the House popular vote has been strong since at least the 1989-90 cycle — though, importantly, there have been some exceptions, like 1997-98.

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Specials

 Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and local elections. 

Welcome to the last special elections until Nov, and what a day it was - w/ Dems flipping a crucial R-held Trump seat in NH by 12%, and securing their PA State House majority w/ a 8% overperformance!

Final Pre-EDay Score: Dems have outperformed Biden by ~6% in 2023 Special Elex! pic.twitter.com/D8mYAGlBXW

— Ethan C7 (@ECaliberSeven) September 20, 2023

Good Night for Dems

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and local elections.  Republicans have lost ground in big cities.

Caroline Vakil at The Hill:

Democrats had a lot to celebrate on Tuesday night.

In one of the most closely watched races of the year, Democratic candidate Heather Boyd beat Republican Katie Ford in the special election for a Pennsylvania state House seat outside Philadelphia, allowing them to keep control of the lower chamber.

The race was seen as particularly critical since Democrats feared Republicans would use a potential majority to push through restrictive measures relating to abortion and LGBTQ issues.

Meanwhile, in Jacksonville, Fla., Democrats scored an upset after Donna Deegan (D) won the mayoral race there against Republican Daniel Davis, who was backed by DeSantis. The election offered Democrats some relief given Duval County’s red leanings, suggesting that Democrats can still be competitive in the state even as Florida has trended Republican in recent years.

Meanwhile, in Colorado Springs, independent candidate Yemi Mobolade won the mayoral race against Republican Wayne Williams, a former Colorado secretary of state. The election delivered yet another blow to Republicans given that El Paso County, where Colorado Springs is situated, was a county that former President Trump won by 11 points in 2020.

With the Jacksonville flip, the largest city with a Republican mayor is Fort Worth, TX (pop.  918,915).

For folks who don't know Jacksonville, the city and county are the same government. Wrong to think this is another "big" Dem city. It has outlying rural areas and a significant number of military retirees. It's a slightly red-leaning bellweather for the state. Why this is a bfd

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) May 17, 2023

Aaron Blake at WP:

All told, according to the Daily Kos Elections numbers, Democrats have overperformed the 2020 presidential results by an average of six points across 18 state legislative races this year. (And again, that was a good election for them.) They’ve also beaten their 2016 margins by an average of 10 points.

And that doesn’t include the highest offices on the ballot thus far in 2023. In a crucial Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, the Democratic-aligned candidate won by 11 points, ending 15 years of conservative control of the court. And in the only special congressional election of 2023 so far, in Virginia, Democrats beat their 2020 margin by double digits.

Off-off Year Elections in 2023

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Aaron Blake at WP:

Four states held special elections or primaries on Tuesday, and all four were encouraging for Democrats:

• A much-watched primary for a crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court seat was technically nonpartisan, but featured two candidates clearly more aligned with the left and two competing to be the conservative candidate. The left-leaning candidates combined for 54 percent, while the right-leaning ones combined for 46 percent; the field is now narrowed to two candidates, one left-leaning and one right-leaning. (This is in a state that has been decided by less than a percentage point in the last two presidential elections, and where the first round in a 2020 state Supreme Court race was very close.) Also, the de facto Democratic nominee, Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz, is currently taking slightly more of the vote than the two GOP-aligned candidates together.
• In the special election for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District, Democrat Jennifer McClellan is currently winning by 49 points in a district President Biden won by 36 points in 2020. Compare that margin to those of the late Democratic incumbent Rep. Donald McEachin in 2022 (30 points) and the party’s 2021 gubernatorial nominee (who carried the district by 13 points).
• In a Kentucky race, Democratic state Senate candidate Cassie Chambers Armstrong won by 54 points in a district Biden carried by 30, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
• And in New Hampshire, Democrats held on to a key state House seat in the closely divided chamber, winning by 11 points in a race that was literally tied on Election Day 2022. (The state reran the election after each candidate emerged with the same number of votes.)

The results come on top of a trio of Pennsylvania state House special elections earlier this month in which Democrats significantly over-performed in the 2020 presidential election results. That Democrats won the seats wasn’t surprising — the closest district favored Biden by 16 points in 2020 — but Democrats exceeded those 2020 margins by 14, 24, and 33 points with control of the chamber at stake.

Updated: U.S. House Special Elections, 1957-Presenthttps://t.co/q5mmq1eQyO

— Greg Giroux (@greggiroux) January 12, 2022