In any other year, Annalia Mejia’s 20-point victory in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District might have been a surprise result.
But the progressive organizer’s performance Thursday was a bit of a shock, despite former Vice President Kamala Harris leading in the district by only 8 points.
It was the latest in a long series of Democratic underperformance in the polls since President Donald Trump took office last year, and nowhere near the biggest.
A POLITICO analysis of 229 state and federal elections since Trump’s inauguration shows that Democratic candidates have outperformed Harris in 193 of them. On average, Democratic candidates outperformed Harris by 5 points. In a handful of special polls, he has pulled more than 20 points to the left.
It’s a warning sign for Republicans that flashes across the country every few weeks. Consistently better performance in special elections has been an indicator of midterm transitions in the past, and this trend has been particularly strong over the past 15 months. In the two-year cycle of special elections in 2018, the margins shifted to the left in nearly two-thirds of the special elections, According to downballot. In November of that year, the Democrats gained 40 seats.
This cycle, Democrats have shifted the race to the left in nearly 85 percent of special elections.
“The outperformance across the country in special election after special election is a trend that cannot be ignored and is evidence that the American people are tired of Republicans’ broken promises,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Aidan Johnson said in a statement.
Of course, surprising double-digit swings in some particular polls don’t mean that every seat won by Trump by 10 points is going to be in play in November. And part of the strong numbers come from comparing candidates to Harris, who performed worse than down-ballot Democrats on the same ballot in 2024. For example, in New Jersey’s 11th District, then-Rep. Mike Sherrill won by only 15 points while Harris won by 8 points. Mejia won the special election by 20 points.
Bernadette Breslin, spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said, “Doing better than the most unpopular Democratic presidential candidate in history is an extremely low bar and to promote it as an accomplishment is shameful.”
And turnout in special elections is generally much lower than in midterm or presidential elections. National Republicans argue that the midterms will be different when turnout is higher.
“Democrats are co-opting low-turnout special elections to spin a narrative that falls apart when viewed as the full picture,” Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “Republicans have the money, message and momentum heading into 2026, and we are outpacing Democrats where it matters in the battleground states that will decide the majority.”
But Democrats’ improvements over 2024 extend to races and districts that are very different from each other, including special elections for House and state legislative seats, as well as regular gubernatorial and legislative elections in Virginia and New Jersey last year. Steady progress for Democrats has come in red and blue districts, swing and safe states — and a sign heading into the midterms that the political climate has changed since 2024.
Morgan Bonwell, an Iowa-based Republican strategist, said Trump’s victory motivated Democratic voters to turn out.
“This angered the Democrats. They suffered a big loss,” he said. “They got a chance to come out and get out there again.”
The data shows that Democrats’ improvements were not just the result of partisan voters in deep blue areas: Most were in districts where Trump defeated Harris. The biggest gains were in the Brooklyn state Senate district won by Trump, where the Democratic candidate improved Harris’s vote share by 45 percentage points, followed by state legislative races in Rhode Island and Oklahoma by 28 and 27 points, respectively.
Republicans’ biggest gain was in a February special election for an Alabama state legislative seat, where the GOP candidate led Trump by 13 points.
Democratic strategist Fred Hicks said he is encouraged by voters reconnecting with the party after a disappointing 2024 campaign in which former President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris’ brief campaign failed to prevent Trump’s re-election.
“Trump’s decisions and his pronouncements immediately emboldened Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters, making people realize that they don’t have the luxury of sitting on their emotions,” Hicks said.
Another encouraging sign for Democrats is that some state legislative elections overlap with congressional battlegrounds. For example, three state legislative special elections in Iowa took place within the boundaries of the state’s 1st and 3rd congressional districts – with the top Democratic targets being GOP Representatives Marianette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn. In each of those special elections, the Democratic candidate outperformed Harris by 12 to 13 percentage points.
Bonewell, an Iowa-based Republican strategist, warned that Miller-Meeks, Nunn and the rest of the GOP in Iowa will need to coordinate closely to match Democrats’ turnout in November, especially with strong candidates like Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sands, who he says “has the ability to drive turnout.”
“They need to be a united front, and in my opinion, they need to pool the resources to bring them all forward,” he said. “I think it will definitely be challenging.”
Other special elections have taken place in some of the biggest Senate battlegrounds. Since last year, there have been six state legislative special elections in Georgia, and all have shifted toward the Democrats by between 2 and 10 points. A Democrat overcame Harris’ margin in the district by 13 points in the congressional special election for the seat of former Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Two other special elections were held in Maine – one leaning 6 points toward the Democrats, and the other leaning toward the GOP by less than one point.
The Democrats’ outperforming performance after 2025 comes despite persistently low favorability for the party. North Carolina-based Democratic strategist Doug Wilson attributed this to the focus on kitchen-table issues — the blueprint for the “affordable” playbook used by successful Democratic campaigns in the past year.
Wilson said, “I know the brand of the party still isn’t where it was before, but at the same time, I think the Democrats have done a good job of getting back to what I call their Democratic roots.” “Remembering what it’s like to be that man or that woman who lies awake all night worrying about how they’re going to feed their family, how they’re going to put gas in the car, even how they’re going to save for retirement.”
There are still unknown factors that may shape the medium-term environment. In the 2022 election cycle, Democrats may struggle in special elections Dobbs The decision brought abortion rights to the forefront, then went on to win, culminating in the midterms, which had mixed results for both sides.
But for now, this trend has boosted Democrats’ hopes for November. Democratic strategist Alex Kellner said they are headed for a big wave of victories reminiscent of Republicans’ landslide victory in the 2010 midterms.
“This threshold is more of a major accomplishment for Democrats than they have been in a long time,” Kellner said.
