Tuesday’s election results in Wisconsin and Florida were nothing short of disastrous for the Republican Party. On Sunday, I wrote, “[President Donald] Trump keeps his troops in line because they think his backing will give them the best chance to win reelection in 2026. So what happens if being closely tied to Trump makes it less likely they survive?”
We’re about to find out what happens.
In Wisconsin, Democrats won a state Supreme Court race by 10 percentage points, in a state that Trump won by about 1 point in 2024, meaning the conservative court nominee ran 11 points behind Trump, despite Elon Musk’s big spending in the race.
Meanwhile, in two House special elections in Florida, Republicans underperformed Trump’s 2024 margins by 16 points in Florida’s 6th District (which Trump won by 30 points) and by 22 points in Florida’s 1st, where Trump won by 37 points.
How significant are those margins?
If Democrats had performed 10 points better in Senate races in 2024, Democratic Sen. Bob Casey would’ve survived in Pennsylvania (he lost by 0.2 points), Sen. Sherrod Brown would’ve survived in Ohio (he lost by 3.6 points), Democratic-ish independent Dan Osborn would’ve beat Republican incumbent Deb Fischer in Nebraska (he lost by 6.7 points), Sen. Jon Tester would’ve survived in Montana (he lost by 7.1 points), and Democrat Colin Allred would’ve beat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (he lost by 8.5 points).
Add all that up, and Democrats would currently enjoy a 52-48 Senate majority.
Kick that up to a 15-point overperformance, and Dems would’ve picked up seats in Florida (we lost by 12.8 points) and Missouri (we lost by 13.7 points). We’d be at 54-46.
Looking at the 2026 Senate map, Republicans once again have the on-paper advantage. Democrats have to defend tough seats in Georgia and Michigan, with no obvious pickup opportunities beyond Maine and North Carolina. We need to gain four seats for the majority, a tough proposition … unless we see these same kinds of margin shifts.
In 2020, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa won her second Senate term with 52% of the vote to the Democratic candidate’s 45%. Iowa has trended away from Democrats in recent years, but given the hard impact that tariffs will have on the state, you never know what will happen.
Florida will have a special election for the seat vacated by Marco Rubio, whom Trump tapped to be secretary of state. Given the dramatic Republican underperformance in those two special elections, something might brew here. The seat is currently occupied by appointee Ashley Moody.
In Texas, incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn won his last race in 2020—with Trump at the top of the ticket—by 9.6 points. Texas will be among the states hardest hit by tariffs.
Ohio will feature a special election to replace Vice President JD Vance, who won his 2022 Senate race by 6.1 points. Could Brown be enticed to run again? No word yet on his intentions, which could also include a run for governor.
Likewise, could Democrats entice Tester to run again in 2026? The incumbent Republican, Steve Daines, won in 2020 by 10 points. But as an agricultural border state, Montana will be hard hit by tariffs and deportations.
And in the House, there were 43 Republicans who won in 2024 by less than 15 points—and 15 of them by less than 5 points. And in a tsunami, that’s just the lowest-hanging fruit.
It’s obviously early, and we can’t extrapolate an April 1 special election to next November’s general election, which will have a larger turnout. Additionally, Democrats performed well in many special elections ahead of the 2024 general election. But there is one difference between then and now—Trump won’t be at the top of the ticket anymore, and historically, the party in power suffers steep losses. Democrats largely avoided that curse in 2022, but nothing suggests Republicans will have similar luck next year.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
