But Martinez is a Democrat who took 62% of the vote in a district that had given Donald Trump a 13-percentage-point victory in the 2024 presidential race. And her win came a week after Democrats seized a Texas Senate district that had supported Trump even more strongly – a result that immediately triggered concern in Republican circles.
Because fewer people turn out for special elections, they’re considered an early predictor of partisan enthusiasm heading into regularly scheduled elections. And with the 2026 midterm elections less than nine months away, analysts are already scrambling for indications of the likely outcome.
As a political scientist who studies congressional elections, I’m interested in the question of whether special elections can really tell us which way the political winds are currently blowing.
Democrats, of course, are hoping for a “blue wave” like they rode in 2018, when they picked up 40 House seats and won a majority in that chamber, while Republicans want to hang on to the very slim margins they have in both the House and Senate.
In the 2026 election cycle, as in previous ones, prognosticators and political professionals are looking to the outcomes of these intermittent races at various levels of government as a gauge of how voters are feeling about the two parties. And the results from the first 15 months of the second Trump administration appear to spell very bad news for the Republicans.
Setting a baseline
Since Election Day 2024, 88 special elections featuring candidates from both major parties have taken place for institutions including state legislatures and the U.S. House.
When analyzing the results of these races, it’s important to have figures to compare them to. After all, a Democrat just barely squeaking by in a state legislative race may not look very impressive on its face – but if that race took place in the rural heart of a red state, it could raise hackles among Republicans.
Most political analysts agree that the best available comparison point for special elections are the results for the most recent presidential election in that same district. There are a few reasons for this.
The nationalization of party politics means there are few members of Congress representing states or districts that voted for the other party for president. So the best comparison is to the only truly national election in the U.S.
Second, using presidential results creates the same baseline for all races. By comparing special election results to the prior election environment, all the special election results get compared to the same standard.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, recent midterm elections have typically served as a referendum on the party in power, particularly the president. In trying to measure how voters are reacting to Trump’s second term, it makes sense to measure their behavior against the last time Trump was on the ballot.
Are special elections predictive?
With this baseline in mind, it’s easy to compare the results of special elections in particular districts to the results of the last presidential election in that same district.
In the 2022 cycle, for example, Democrats running in special elections underperformed President Joe Biden’s 2020 results in their districts by about 4 percentage points on average, which translated into a 3-percentage-point loss nationwide in U.S. House races in the November 2022 midterms and the loss of their majority in the chamber.
Conversely, in 2018 – like this year, a midterm following a Trump election – Democrats bested Republicans by 8 percentage points in November, after overperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margins in special elections throughout the previous two years by 9 percentage points on average.
The 2024 cycle is a clear exception to this pattern of regular elections closely following special election results: Prior to the presidential election, Democrats outperformed in special elections by an average of 4 percentage points but ended up losing nationally by 3 percentage points in November.
Like special elections, midterm contests tend to turn out fewer but more engaged voters than presidential years. Therefore, it may be that special elections are more predictive of midterm results than presidential cycles. At any rate, if previous midterm outcomes are any guide, the numbers being posted by Democrats in special elections so far in the 2026 cycle are impossible to ignore.
On average, they’re running ahead of Harris’s 2024 margins by a whopping 13 percentage points. That’s better than they did in 2018, when they ultimately picked up 40 seats in the House and seven governorships across the country.
What’s different about specials?
Democrats, however, may not want to pop the champagne corks just yet. Many roadblocks remain in their quest to take back control of Congress. For one thing, the U.S. Senate map remains a difficult one for Democrats. Even if they end up creating a 2018-like election environment with an unpopular president, many Senate contests are taking place in solidly red states.
It’s also always worth bearing in mind that there’s no telling how the events of the next nine months might reshape public opinion.
And special elections, while useful metrics, are far from perfect barometers of public opinion. They take place at different times, and could be just as reflective of hyperlocal factors, such as flawed candidates, as they are of nationalized partisan conditions.
Special elections tend to have far lower turnout than regular midterm or presidential contests. It’s also difficult to tell whether overperformance is due to highly motivated partisans or persuasion of independents and voters from the other party.
Using all the tools available
Still, special elections do have key advantages over traditional polling. Although polls do their best to approximate voters’ political attitudes, elections reveal these attitudes through voters’ actual, observed behavior – exactly the type of behavior that analysts are trying to predict in November.
Generally, this is preferable to asking a hypothetical in opinion polls, which are getting more difficult than ever to do well.
In the end, special elections are just one piece of the prediction puzzle. But the other puzzle pieces are also spelling out potential bad news for the GOP.
The generic ballot, a standard polling question that asks voters’ intent to vote for one party or the other in November without naming specific candidates, has the GOP about 6 percentage points behind the Democrats. Trump’s approval rating, meanwhile, continues to hover below 40%.
There’s no telling for sure whether these indicators will turn out to be truly predictive until November. But all of them should be sounding alarm bells for Republicans.
Charlie Hunt, Associate Professor of Political Science, Boise State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.