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Last Tuesday night, Democrats chalked up two moral victories and one real one.
They decisively won a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court by 10 percentage points, to keep a 4-3 majority. And though they lost two special elections for congressional seats in Florida, they cut into the GOP’s margins from just five months earlier.
In the 1st District, the Republican congressional candidate in 2024, Matt Gaetz, won by 32 percentage points. In 2024, President Donald Trump won the district by 37. The Democratic candidate lost it by only 15 last Tuesday.
Same story in the 6th District.
The GOP candidate in 2024, Michael Waltz, won by 33 points, and Trump carried it by 30. The Democratic candidate lost by 14 last week.
In the Trump era, Democrats have become the party that excels in low-turnout elections. Republicans now benefit from more people voting — a striking reversal of historical norms and assumptions. Democratic strategist David Shor estimates that if all eligible voters cast ballots in November, Trump would have won the popular vote by 5 percentage points.
(Some North Carolina GOP lawmakers haven’t gotten that message and are still trying to curtail early voting.)
Watching the election coverage last Tuesday, I was curious how the 2017 special elections played out in the first year of Trump 1.0.
Did Democrats cut into GOP margins as deeply?
If so, did that portend their “blue wave” midterm victories in 2018?
And are there any impacts in North Carolina?
Bigger energy in 2017?
In early 2017, Democrats were stunned by Trump’s surprise victory over Hillary Clinton and immediately energized. This year began with Democrats comatose, though the base has been coming alive in recent weeks.
The first special election was held in April 2017, in suburban Atlanta, to replace Republican Tom Price. Democrats poured money and resources into this race and were devastated when Jon Ossoff lost the runoff in June. It was the most expensive House race ever.
But the blue wave in Atlanta was even bigger than anything seen in Florida last week.
Price had won his seat by 34 points in 2016. Ossoff only lost it by four — a 30-point swing!
Here are the other special elections held that year:
Kansas 4th Congressional District, to replace Mike Pompeo. He won it by 31 points in 2016; the Republican candidate had a six-point win in 2017.
That was a shift of 25 points to the Democrats.
Montana’s at-large district. The Republican won it by 15 in 2016. The margin shrank to six points in 2017.
That’s a shift of nine points to the left.
- South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District. Mick Mulvaney won it by 20 points in 2016; Ralph Norman squeaked out a three-point win in 2017.
Leftward shift: 17 points.
- Utah’s 3rd Congressional District. Republican Jason Chaffetz won with 74% of the vote in 2016. In the 2017 special election, the winner only got 58% of the vote (although there was a third-party candidate.)
(California also had a special election that year. But the run-off featured all Democrats.)
As you can see, last Tuesday’s Democratic momentum was not unprecedented. And it was perhaps less than what was seen in 2017, which leaves Democrats in the slightly odd position of being arguably more excited now about smaller gains than they were about much larger gains eight years ago.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race last Tuesday was in line with recent results. Candidates backed by the Democratic Party won court seats in 2023 and 2020 by similar margins.
But 2017 did portend a big year for Democrats a year later, when they retook the House with a net gain of 40 seats. They won the presidency two years later.
And it’s possible Democrats could do even better in future special elections, if the economy struggles under the weight of Trump’s tariffs. Arizona will hold a special congressional election in September.
What this means for North Carolina
Could any of North Carolina’s 10 GOP-held House seats be in play? The answer is pretty easy: Highly doubtful.
The state’s current congressional map has been so efficiently gerrymandered that there’s only one competitive seat: Democrat Don Davis’ 1st District in the rural northeast.
Here are the winning GOP margins for the 10 seats Republicans won in 2024:
- Greg Murphy +55
- Virginia Foxx +19
- Addison McDowell +38
- David Rouzer +17
- Mark Harris +19
- Richard Hudson +19
- Pat Harrigan +19
- Chuck Edwards +14
- Brad Knott +17
- Tim Moore +16
The smallest margin is Edwards’ 14-point victory in western North Carolina. Buncombe and Henderson counties saw a rare shift to the left in 2024, and there is the wildcard over how satisfied voters feel about Trump’s Helene recovery.
Western Carolina University Political Science Professor Chris Cooper says Edwards is the most vulnerable of the 10.
“That’s not the same as saying he is likely to lose,” Cooper said. “There are only seven Democrats currently in Congress who represent districts that lean in the Republican direction. None of those seven represent a district that leans as heavily towards the Republican Party as (Edwards’ district).”
“If a Democrat somehow won the 11th, it would be the biggest upset in Congress,” Cooper added.
There are other ways for North Carolina Democrats to ride a blue wave in 2026: state Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby is up for reelection; all 170 seats in the General Assembly are on the ballot; and, of course, the biggest prize will be Republican Thom Tillis’ U.S. Senate seat.
There is one caveat to reading the tea leaves found in special elections.
While they were prescient in 2017, the 2022 and 2023 special elections weren’t good predictors. After the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022, Democrats did exceptionally well in special elections, greatly outperforming their historical averages.
It did not help them in November 2024.
