In some other year, Analilia Mejia’s 20-point win in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District might have been a stunning result.
But the progressive organizer’s romp on Thursday elicited little shock, despite the margin in a district former Vice President Kamala Harris had carried by just 8 points.
It was the latest in a long string of Democratic overperformances in elections 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 Democratic candidates outperformed Harris in 193 of them. On average, Democratic candidates overperformed Harris by 5 points. In a handful of special elections, they have pulled more than 20 points to the left.
It is a warning sign for Republicans that has continued to flash across the country every few weeks. Consistent overperformances in special elections have been an indicator of midterm shifts in the past, and the trend over the last 15 months is particularly strong. In the two-year cycle of special elections heading into 2018, margins shifted to the left in about two-thirds of special elections, according to The Downballot. In November of that year, Democrats netted 40 seats.
This cycle, Democrats have shifted races left in close to 85 percent of special elections.
“The overperformance across the country in special election after special election is a trend that can’t be ignored and proof that the American people are souring on Republicans’ broken promises,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Aidan Johnson said in a statement.
Of course, eye-popping double-digit shifts in some special elections don’t mean every seat that Trump won by 10 points is going to be in play in November. And part of the strong numbers comes from comparing candidates to Harris, who did worse in 2024 than down-ballot Democrats on the same ballot. For example, in New Jersey’s 11st District, then-Rep. Mike Sherrill won by just shy of 15 points while Harris won by 8. Mejia, in the special election, won by 20.
“Outperforming the most unpopular Democratic presidential nominee in history is an abysmally low bar, and touting it as an achievement is embarrassing,” National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Bernadette Breslin said.
And turnout in the special elections is generally much lower than in a midterm or presidential election. National Republicans argue the midterms will be different when turnout is higher.
“Democrats are cherry-picking low-turnout special elections to spin a narrative that falls apart the second you look at the full picture,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement. “Republicans have the money, the message, and the momentum heading into 2026, and we are outpacing Democrats where it counts in the battlegrounds that will decide the majority.”
But Democrats’ improvements compared to 2024 extend across races and districts that are very different from one another, including special elections for the House and state legislative seats, as well as regular gubernatorial and legislative elections in Virginia and New Jersey last year. The consistent progress for Democrats has come across red and blue districts, swing and safe states — and is a signal going into the midterms that the political environment has shifted since 2024.
Morgan Bonwell, an Iowa-based Republican strategist, said Trump’s victory catalyzed Democratic voters to turn out.
“That fired Democrats up. They had a big loss,” she said. “They had an opportunity right there again to come out and turn out.”
The data reveals that Democrats’ improvements are not just a product of partisan voters in deep-blue areas: Most were in districts where Trump beat Harris. The largest gain was in a Trump-won Brooklyn state Senate district where the Democratic candidate improved on Harris’ vote share by 45 percentage points, followed by state legislative races in Rhode Island and Oklahoma that swung 28 and 27 points, respectively.
Republicans’ largest gain was in a February special election for an Alabama state legislative seat, where the GOP candidate ran 13 points ahead of Trump.
Democratic strategist Fred Hicks said he’s encouraged by voters reengaging with the party after an uninspiring 2024 that saw former President Joe Biden drop out from the presidential race and Harris’ abbreviated campaign fail to prevent Trump’s reelection.
“Trump’s decisions and his announcements sobered up Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters right away, so that people realized they didn’t have the luxury of sitting in their feelings,” Hicks said.
Another encouraging sign for Democrats is that some of the state legislative elections have overlapped with congressional battlegrounds. Three state legislative special elections in Iowa, for example, occurred within the bounds of the state’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts — top Democratic targets held by GOP Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn. In each of those special elections, the Democratic candidate outperformed Harris’ 2024 margin by between 12 and 13 percentage points.
Bonwell, the Iowa-based Republican strategist, warned that Miller-Meeks, Nunn and the rest of the GOP slate in Iowa will need to coordinate closely to match Democrats’ turnout in November, especially with strong candidates like Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, who she says “has the ability to drive turnout.”
“They need to be a united front, and they need to pool resources, in my opinion, to bring them all up,” she said. “I think it’ll be challenging for sure.”
Other special elections have occurred in some of the biggest Senate battlegrounds. Since last year, there have been six state legislative special elections in Georgia, and all shifted between 2 and 10 points toward Democrats. The congressional special election for former Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s seat saw a Democrat surpass Harris’ margin in the district by 13 points. Two other special elections were in Maine — one swung 6 points toward Democrats, and the other moved by less than a point toward the GOP.
Democrats’ overperformance comes despite consistently low favorability for the party since 2025. North Carolina-based Democratic strategist Doug Wilson credited that to a focus on kitchen-table issues — the blueprint of the “affordability” playbook used by successful Democratic campaigns over the past year.
“I know that the party’s brand is still not where it once was, but at the same time, I think the Democrats have done a good job of getting back to what I call Democratic roots,” Wilson said. “Remembering what it was like to be that man or that woman that’s keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they’re going to feed their families, how they’re going to put gas in the car, how they’re even going to save for retirement.”
There are still unknown factors that could shape the midterm environment. In the 2022 election cycle, Democrats struggled in special elections until the Dobbs decision brought abortion rights to the forefront, then went on a winning streak, culminating in a midterm that had mixed results for both parties.
But for now, the trend has Democrats raising their expectations for November. Democratic strategist Alex Kellner said they could be heading for a massive wave of victories reminiscent of Republicans’ huge win in the 2010 midterms.
“The ceiling is higher for Democrats than it has been in a long time for a big pickup,” Kellner said.
