The first special election flip of the cycle happened tonight. A very Trump leaning Iowa Senate District (R+21) had a special election as the prior Republican State Senator is the new Iowa Lt. Gov. And it flipped to the Dems:
THE DEMOCRATS HAVE FLIPPED IOWA’S #SD35:
Mike Zimmer (D)- 51.8%
Katie Whittington (R)- 48.2%THIS WAS A TRUMP+21 DISTRICT!
— Uncrewed (@uncrewed.bsky.social) January 28, 2025 at 10:06 PM
The story, much like 2017, is most likely a story of differential turnout. Energized Democrats voted (as the Dem won the Election Day vote) while Republicans stayed home. However, this reinforces two stories.
First, non-Presidential elections are likely bluer electorates and the further down the attention scale, the bluer it gets.
Secondly, and building on the first, this is why the House is the leverage point. A triple the decisive amount of Republicans won in 2024 by less than 4 points. If there are consistent Dem overperformances in the special elections, it reminds them that they are extremely vulnerable in November 2026.
Bupalos
Here’s the thing:
If R’s know they are likely to lose democratic elections, it doesn’t mean changing policy. It means they’ll lean in to subversion.
We’ve polarized to this point. Honestly, I don’t think 95% of R’s at this point have any option to moderate or tack. No one will even notice. No one can win an election by altering their behavior.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you, David Anderson, for this bit of encouraging news! It’s always good to be reminded that there are blue-voting folks in “red” states.
BlueGuitarist
Thanks for posting this excellent news!
more from Iowa:
Black Hawk County, a swing county, special election for County Supervisor:
Democrat, labor leader Ritchie Kurtenbach (IBEW) 53%, Republican 23% (3 other candidates)
https://cbs2iowa.com/news/local/special-election-democrat-ritchie-kurtenbach-takes-black-hawk-co-supervisors-seat-with-53-of-vote
https://www.ritch4supervisor.com/
tobie
Given how down we’re all feeling, this is encouraging news. Thanks for posting.
Joy in FL
Thanks for posting this. I also appreciate the other Dem win in the comments.
Gloria DryGarden
WOO HOO.
Seconding all of comments 2-5
Eolirin
Where will victories like that leave the house margin? A win in a district that red is a pretty big deal, since there are a number of other special elections still to come for the house
Edit: Yeah, all three of the outstanding House elections are in districts with a lower partisan lean than that. And yeah, a House election will be higher turn out, but damn.
Gloria DryGarden
@Bupalos: I know it’s early in this thread, but it’s late at night. I wish to understand your comment. Could you translate it, as if I were 12?
Not to detract from the glee of getting any tiny morsel of good news, which I’ll still celebrate.
Gloria DryGarden
@Eolirin: Great question.
Plus I’m just happy to see you here.
stinger
@Eolirin:
These two elections were for the Iowa legislature and a county board of supervisors, so no impact on the US House of Representatives.
Eolirin
@Eolirin: Not that I’m going to be hopeful about this, because two of them are in Florida, but I think if we somehow flipped all three special elections for the House, we’d actually end up in the majority. O_O
BlueGuitarist
This state senate district, Clinton County, eastern Iowa, is in US House district IA-1, which had the narrowest Republican victory in ‘24.
Early version of The Downballot write up on BlueSky
https://bsky.app/profile/the-downballot.com/post/3lgu4vp3b2c2n
Eolirin
@stinger: No, it’s the margin flip; if that were to happen with the outstanding house races, they’re *less* R+ than this district was. I was slightly inarticulate about that.
Again, house races should have higher turn out, so they might not swing as wildly, but like, the NY one, which is only an R+9 district, I could definitely see us taking if we’re seeing this kind of swing nationally.
RaflW
Send NYT reporters to these Iowa Diners, dammit.
stinger
@Eolirin: Oh, I see what you were asking. (Though I have no response!) Thanks for the clarification.
Eolirin
@stinger: Yeah, it was mostly rhetorical.
SpaceUnit
Yay! We’re winning. Fuck me.
Eolirin
If we go into 2026 overperforming that much, we’re taking the house back for sure, as long as we’re allowed to have elections and they’re not doing crazy shit like arresting all the Democrats. We might even have a shot at a sweep in the Senate, though holding Georgia will be a heavy lift, I think.
It won’t be enough to take the Senate back, though a similarly good 2028 would get us over the top, unless something really weird happens, like we win in Florida and Iowa, but it might be enough to put a Collins/Murkowski blocking coalition in place for the worst excesses of the Trump administration.
Chetan Murthy
@Gloria DryGarden: I read that comment as saying that the country is irrevocably divided, and if the bad guys can’t win free&fair elections, they’ll make sure those elections are neither free nor fair. They’ll steal ’em.
I’m feeling pretty dour, so sometimes I feel somewhat the same way. But at least, I’m willing to wait and see for a while, and am not convinced that the situation is that dire. As Paul Campos said over at LG&M today ( https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/01/everyone-needs-to-stop-pretending-to-be-so-savvy )
Again, I’m not saying that I’m all “we’re gonna win this!” Just that, it isn’t -obvious- we’ll lose. Yet.
jefft452
but but but
I thought the Ds were toxic and everybody hates “woke”
H.E.Wolf
@jefft452: Bless your heart.
Archon
I can’t help but think that trying to win future elections is not part of the Republicans plan…
Gloria DryGarden
@Chetan Murthy: thank you.
I do perceive that republicans are not in the majority so much, but win by voter suppression and gerrymandering among other things.
so infuriating.
I hope all our attempts at getting more liberal media, actual accurate info available more widely through all the strategies, might go some ways toward closing the divide, because FAFO ..
prefer to hope, and aim toward possibility, since it’s the right thing. Regardless of despair feelings.
Eolirin
@Archon: I am increasingly coming to believe there’s not that much of a plan to begin with.
hitchhiker
All those special elections and off-year elections before the debacle in Nov seemed to be pointing at … well, not THAT. My sense is that people just want to shake the government like a tree and see what falls out.
They’re not thinking about it very hard at all.
Which is a problem, because as we’ve seen, the Rs will simply make shit up. They’ll claim credit for things that didn’t happen, and for things that did that they had nothing to do with. They’ll blame Democrats for every single problem, and they’ll find LOTS of problems to hype in this way.
It’s almost — almost! — as if nothing we do can change the effectiveness of that strategy.
Aussie Sheila
The GOP is going to find out that smashing the existing ‘norms and guardrails’ as well as the constitution won’t benefit them. If Dem partisans can hold their understandable anxiety about what is happening, they might find a whole new, younger leadership that is devoted both to democracy and to lifting up their base together with a wider electorate disgusted with the wrecking ball.
The electorate has made it clear they are over politics as usual. However like turkeys not voting for Christmas, no one votes for their own demise.
I think GOP ambition and their misunderstanding of the 2024 election results has run ahead of what the wider electorate is willing to tolerate, and I think that realisation will begin to dawn on even the dimmest GOP seat warmer in the next twelve months.
Eolirin
@hitchhiker: I was always cautious about reading too much into those, because Presidential elections and special elections and midterms are different electorates. They don’t have the same voting patterns and participants.
Trump not being on the ballot is a big open question for future Presidential elections too, assuming we get to have them. He pulls in people that don’t otherwise show up, and it’s not clear that anyone else is going to be able to do that in the near term.
I do worry about PA turning into the next Ohio though.
sentient ai from the future
@Gloria DryGarden: in case you’re not aware, that commenter is best ignored for a number of reasons.
it’s especially hard to come up with a list of offenses here because of how commenting works. it’d be easier via disqus, which LGM uses, and where this guy also plies his shitty pseudo-insights, but at least you can look at the history by clicking on his account.
but you know, every garden has some weeds
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Onion posted this on Facebook.
https://theonion.com/about-facebook/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIGq9FleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZ0nM4qfWV1GxEMZffNLUS_lU9Eajr30Xr0_gJsgOClv9M4TI89mXZR65w_aem_vY98nUH1PYS8DIFx4l_D9Q
I think I can hear someone screaming in Menlo Park here in the East Bay. lol
Aussie Sheila
@Eolirin:
I am confident that younger Dems will be able to pull people in, in the next electoral cycle and beyond. It’s both a generational thing and a reaction to the current nihilism infecting the broader electorate.
Democratic Party partisans and their supporters who organise and don’t back down in the face of culture war idiocy, while firmly sticking to the values of dignity, respect and equality for all are well placed right now.
sentient ai from the future
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
these days zuckerberg always looks like beaker having a midlife crisis to me.
which is a shame because beaker is genuinely like my 3rd favorite muppet
The Audacity of Krope
Sleeping is best. I say at 3 in the morning…
patrick II
Here is a sad thing. My wife, a Chinese lady from Taiwan and a U.S. citizen for 40 years, asked me today whether she should carry her passport. At first, I scoffed since she has a driver’s license, but the fact it is even on her mind is disheartening. Then I advised her to have a picture of it on her phone. Just to be safe.
Baud
Thanks for the good news, David.
Shalimar
@Eolirin: They seem to be operating on the theory that this is their last chance to really fuck things up and take over, and all their planning has been on the fucking up part because that is what they enjoy, without much thought put into what happens afterwards.
Baud
Gvg
@H.E.Wolf: I would like some statistics on the registered party of voter compared to vote results so we could see if any republicans voted blue. Also how nuts/ extreme was the Republican candidate and did he beat more moderate republicans or did any bother to run?
Matt McIrvin
@Gloria DryGarden: I think he’s saying the danger of losing won’t have any effect on Republican behavior, in case we thought it would, which I don’t think we did.
Trump himself is often a paper tiger though–he comes on shockingly intense to scare people into submission, then backs off if they don’t submit. It’s old crooked real estate developer tactics. But it doesn’t have anything to do with elections.
RaflW
@Archon: George is a grifter, but I agree with him on this one:
Republicans certainly have motive to try to f-ck up our elections, but I don’t think they have the organized power to do so at the granular level necessary. At least not yet.
So we fight and we plan to win.
Dave's Dad
This is wonderful news….but there is still a lot of work to do…
WaterGirl
@Dave’s Dad: Hi Dave’s Dad! :-)
Dave's Dad
@WaterGirl: Hello