#democratic overperformance

There was a special election on Tuesday for a vacant seat in the Michigan legislature. It was more consequential than most such elections because the outcome would determine control of the Michigan State Senate.

The Democrat in Michigan Senate District 35, Chedrick Greene, cruised to victory and kept the Michigan Senate in Democratic control. And as with other special elections since Trump's return to office, the Democrat overperformed. 😁

In the wake of a key victory for Democrats in the Michigan Senate special election Tuesday night and an overperformance by now-Sen.-elect Chedrick Greene, who won the seat by nearly 20 points over Republican Jason Tunney, officials and pundits on both sides of the aisle are attempting to make sense of what this means for the state going forward. Prior to the election, many had considered the race to be a potential bellwether for the November midterms, both in Michigan and nationwide. Greene, in his victory speech, repeatedly called the district “deep purple,” with Kamala Harris winning the district by less than a single percentage point in 2024. As for whether or not parties should actually use Tuesday night’s results as such, political consultant and former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party Jeff Timmer said, “if they don’t, they’re foolish.”

Kamala Harris won this district by less than 1% in 2024. Democrat Chedrick Greene won it by 19.5% on Tuesday.

Sen.-Elect Greene won it because people actually turned out to vote for him. Elections are not difficult to understand; you win if more people vote for you than your opponent(s).

The last special state legislative election of 2025 was won convincingly by a Democrat.

Iowa Democrat Renee Hardman held on to the legislative seat left vacant by the death of fellow Democrat Claire Celsi in October. And she became the latest Dem to outperform Democratic margins in previous elections.

Senator-elect Hardman will become the first black woman in the Iowa Senate.

Before the election, the Associated Press reported on the political composition of Iowa Senate District 16:

Celsi was reelected to a third term in 2024 with 69% of the vote. In the presidential race, Democrat Kamala Harris received about 58% of the District 16 vote. Republican Donald Trump received about 41% of the vote and carried only one of the district’s 23 precincts.

Renee Hardman outperformed her popular predecessor by over 2% and Kamala Harris in the same district by 13%.

This win for Dems should be viewed in the context of other recent Dem wins. From The New Republic:

Those results include Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill’s gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey. But a victory in a small, downballot race such as Hardman’s shows that disapproval of Trump and his administration may be hitting closer to home as the government fails to end endless wars and make the country more affordable. Earlier this year, Democrats also won big in Erie County, Pennsylvania, which narrowly supported Trump in the 2024 election, and defeated a 36-year Republican incumbent in Virginia’s 66th state House district. Democrats in Georgia managed to win two statewide races for public service commissioner, their first nonfederal statewide wins since 2006. And even in the deep Southern state of Mississippi, Democrats were able to break the supermajority in the state Senate by flipping three seats after 13 years, taking away Republicans’ ability to override the governor’s veto and easily propose constitutional amendments.

Many people still don't understand that state legislatures form the base of our constitutional system. Amendments to the US Constitution requite the approval of 75% of all state legislatures. The legislature has the final say on how its state's electoral votes are cast.

The state legislature regulates healthcare (abortion, vaccinations, etc.), transportation, education, utilities, taxes, elections, redistricting, and licensing within a state.

Our neglect of legislative elections can hurt us. Presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama understood this – they served in the legislatures of New York, Georgia, and Illinois respectively.

News media doesn't always cover legislatures well. So we need to go out of our way to keep an eye on what's going on under the roofs of our capitols.

The first thing we should do is find out who represents us. This site makes that easy...

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

The Center for Politics at University of Virginia founded by Prof. Larry Sabato has boosted the electability ratings for Democrats in 11 US House districts. 10 have incumbent Dems running for re-election and 1 is an open seat currently held by a Democrat.

It's as important to hold on to seats we already have as it is to flip seats now held by MAGA Republicans.

Here's a link to the article about the by Kyle Kondik.

The House: 11 Rating Changes in Democratic-Held Seats; Non-Presidential Party Typically Doesn’t Lose Many of Their Own Seats in Midterms

Wherever you live, support Democratic candidates regardless of ratings. In various special and regularly scheduled elections over the past half year, Dems have been overperforming by over 11%. A Democrat even flipped Trump's Florida legislative district. So let's not automatically assume that a contest anywhere is out of reach.

Republicans won the special election in TN-07 on Tuesday but they aren't celebrating.

In the November 2024 general election, Republican Mark Green defeated Democrat Megan Berry by a whopping 21.5 points in TN-07. In yesterday's election, Republican Matt Van Epps beat Democrat Aftyn Behn in this deep red district by just 8.9 points. That's a swing of 12.6 points.

Last April in Florida, there were also double-digit swings in favor of Democrats in two House special elections. If Dems can transform Safe Republican House districts into Likely Republican districts, they can also move Likely Republican races to Leaning Republican ones and Leaning Republican ones into Leaning Democratic ones. And Republicans can wave farewell to all those Toss-Up seats.

Democrat Aftyn Behn’s overperformance in the Tennessee special election — which attracted millions of dollars in spending and national attention in its final days — continues a trend of concerning electoral results for the GOP. Earlier this year, Democrats saw big overperformances in losses in other special elections in deep-red seats, and last month they swept a slate of critical off-year elections, including gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. In the wake of those victories, some Republicans urged the White House to retool its political message to better engage moderate voters and independents who broke for Trump in the presidential election.

Fat chance of Trump changing his tune. 🤣😃 If anything, he's getting more demented by the week.

“None of it bodes well for the GOP in the midterms,” Bartlett said. “Being an ostrich with your head in the sand on the key issues that matter most to Americans is not a strategy, or certainty not a winning one.”

Never mind the midterms. The single-digit victory in TN-07 may cause GOP disarray in the current Congress. National Republican Congressional Committee chair Rep. Richard Hudson had this comment before yesterday's vote...

“If our victory margin is single digits, the conference may come unhinged,” the House Republican said prior to polls closing on Tuesday.

Doesn't Rep. Hudson mean more unhinged?

This NYT map shows that every county (or portion thereof) in TN-07 swung to the Democrats. The benchmark was Trump's 2024 percentage.

There was a special election on Tuesday to fill the vacancy in an Ohio US House district due to the resignation of Republican Bill Johnson in OH-06.

It's not a major surprise that Republican Michael Rulli won. His GOP predecessor Bill Johnson took the district in 2022 by 67.7% to 32.3% for Democrat Louis G. Lyras. Donald Trump won the district by about 29% in 2020.

But it was noteworthy to see Rulli, a state senator, win by just 9.3% over a little-known bartender named Michael Kripchak.

The Republican candidate won, and that’s no surprise. But political observers are frankly shocked that the race was far closer than expected. [ ... ] Ohio continues to surprise us. The statewide votes last year, first to prevent Republicans from raising the threshold to pass constitutional amendments to 60 percent, and second to preserve the right to abortion in the state, showed that Ohio voters are ready to draw the line when it comes to extremist religious or anti-democratic measures. [ ... ] [T]he Democratic challenger was a first-time, unknown candidate named Michael Kripchak, who quit his day job to run against GOP state senator, Michael Rulli. Kripchak is a veteran who spent only around $25K to Rulli’s $700,000, a nearly 30 to 1 cash advantage for the Republican.

Every county in this district had a swing to the Democrats. Two counties were actually carried by Democrat Kripchak; Democrats carried no counties in OH-06 in 2022.

Democrats have overperformed in almost every special House election since the start of 2023.

But we still hear the pundits and pollsters droning on about Democrats allegedly being in big trouble this year. Fox News has even dusted off a dormant conspiracy theory that Biden is going to step down and be replaced by Michelle Obama. Fox News doesn't miss a chance to juice up its racist and misogynistic viewers by hinting a white male would be replaced by a black female.

Democratic voters in OH-06 turned out thanks to Democratic volunteers spreading the word. Persistence, enthusiasm, and hard work produce results. To use a Latin phrase: Vincit qui laborat.