Democrats Are Suddenly Winning Races They’re Supposed to Lose

When a slam dunk Republican candidate loses by double digits in Trump country, something has shifted.

In a run of special elections, Democrats have quietly picked up seats in deep red districts they normally have no business winning. These wins suggest Republicans may have misread the political terrain when they redrew congressional maps at Trump’s request. And that should have them worried.

Democrat Taylor Rehmet just won a Texas state Senate seat in Dallas/Fort Worth by 14 points in a district Trump won by 17 points. No Democrat has held that seat in 50 years. Rehmet’s Trump-endorsed Republican opponent outspent him by 6-to-1 and still got demolished. That’s a major red alert for Republicans.

We also have Louisiana Democrat Chastity Martinez, winning a state house seat by 24 points in a district that Trump won by 13 points. That’s a 37-point over-performance from 2024.

This is not a one-off. This is the beginning of a shift.

How They’re Winning

Let’s look at Rehmet’s winning strategy. There was no way he could match his opponent’s spend dollar-for-dollar, so he and his team took a pound-the-pavement approach. (Sound familiar? Ask AOC and Zohran Mamdani how many miles they walked on the way to victory. But I digress.)

Rehmet’s team aimed for 40,000 door knocks. They met voters where they’re at, sat down with them at home, and really listened to them. If Rehmet’s team didn’t have the answers to their questions, they’d call the candidate right there in the room.

Now, let’s not forget, this is a special election run under a very specific set of conditions in a very small community where a fraction of voters turned out. But this is a major cause for cautious optimism.

This Isn’t a Fluke

In the year since Trump retook office, we’ve seen similar upsets in states that he won handily, like Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Mississippi. Democrats running in special elections outperformed Kamala Harris’ 2024 numbers by at least 17 points.

Look at Rehmet: the guy is an Air Force veteran, a union president, from a blue collar background. He’s got broad appeal for the demographics Democrats need to pick up in order to win in these deep red districts. That’s big-tent catnip. And it’s working.

Democratic representatives that suddenly find themselves in newly redrawn districts Trump would have won in 2024, had they existed, are taking note and running candidates to appeal to the demographics who surprisingly came out for Rehmet. Whether that’s running a former Sheriff in a district outside San Antonio, or recruiting a Tejano music star to capitalize on name recognition in the Latino community in the Rio Grande Valley, Democrats in these newly redrawn Republican districts are being ruthlessly strategic.

The reality is that in districts like this, it’s mathematically impossible to win unless you’ve got Republican support. The fact that they are winning means that not only Democrats are turning out and voting for Democratic candidates. Republicans and independents are defecting and voting for Democratic candidates, too.

Republicans Know They Have a Problem

After Rehmet’s upset, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on X that “a swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed. Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms.”

Texas Senator John Cornyn said, “to have that sort of swing is a cause for introspection and trying to figure out what lessons [Republicans] should learn from this.”

Texas Republican Tony Gonzales said that any Republican who dismisses this result as just a rogue special election is missing the point.

Trump himself took his usual I-don’t-know-him approach to the loss. “I’m not involved in that. That’s a local Texas race,” he said. Nevermind that he personally endorsed the Republican opponent.

Deny, deny, deny, I guess.

Why it Matters

Republicans have a razor thin majority in the House, which is why Trump demanded they redistrict in Texas in the first place. If demographic shifts implied in these special elections hold, things might not end well for them in the midterms. Republican states redrew their maps based on demographic realignments in 2024 with this assumption that those would be permanent.

But Trump has lost 10 points with black voters. He’s lost 20 points with Latino voters. He’s lost 40 points with Gen Z voters according to the latest polling. In the Texas race, we saw some jurisdictions swing 50+ points to the left among Latino voters.

So now, suddenly maps that were redrawn to guarantee victory for Republicans in the midterms might not be the slam dunk they were betting on, come 2026.

What’s Driving the Shift

Trump and the Republicans have fundamentally failed to deliver on their core campaign promise: putting America First.

That’s been put on the back burner, while Trump pursues his self-serving agenda. The no-wars president is saber-rattling abroad, which is in no one’s interest but his own. Shots fired in Venezuela were a blatant oil grab. The obsession with taking Greenland is - his words - “psychologically needed for success.” He’s bulldozing the White House to build a gold-plated ballroom. He’s setting up crypto scams that put literally billions of dollars in his pocket, while average Americans struggle to put food on the table.

None of the kitchen table issues Republicans ran on have seen any improvement. They gutted health care, cutting off funding for Medicaid and the ACA. Slashed food assistance. Inflation hasn’t budged from 3% when Trump took office. Manufacturing jobs continue to disappear. Layoffs are at their highest level in almost two decades. The employment numbers are so bad, virtually no jobs have been added since April.

Voters are reaching the end of their ropes, and who’s throwing them a lifeline? Democrats like Taylor Rehmet. So here’s hoping the party learns the right lesson.