Analysis: Elections in Florida and Wisconsin confirm changed political environment

Nathan L. Gonzales, CQ-Roll Call on Apr 2, 2025

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WASHINGTON — With 19 months to go before the midterm elections, it’s too early to know what the political environment will be like in November 2026 and too early to project whether Republicans will maintain their hold on Congress.

But we do know that the political environment has changed since Donald Trump and the Republicans won full control of Washington last fall, and a fresh batch of election results are evidence that the GOP has work to do to avoid big losses next year.

In a high-profile race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Democrat-backed Susan Crawford defeated fellow circuit judge and former Republican state Attorney General Brad Schimel, 55% to 45%, in the most expensive judicial race in history. That 10-point margin is striking in the most evenly divided state in the country, according to Inside Elections’ Baseline, and which Trump narrowly won last year.

Republicans won two important special House elections in Florida, but the margins should be unsettling for the GOP. Jimmy Patronis, the state’s former chief financial officer, won the 1st District race to succeed Matt Gaetz by just 15 points; Trump finished ahead of Kamala Harris by 37 points in the district just five months ago, according to calculations by elections analyst Drew Savicki. And former state Sen. Randy Fine won the 6th District race to succeed Michael Waltz but by 14 points in a seat where Trump finished ahead by 30 points.

That’s on top of special elections from earlier this year, which saw GOP candidates underperform Trump’s 2024 margins. Democrats won a state Senate special election in Iowa in late January, with a 25-point swing in the margin compared with 2024. And a 16-point swing helped Democrats flip a key state Senate seat in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, last week.

There’s also qualitative evidence of a shift in the political environment. Republicans have chosen to dismiss raucous town hall meetings filled with frustrated people venting at their elected officials as gatherings of paid protesters. But they might be missing an opportunity to hear important feedback on the initial 2 1/2 months of the GOP trifecta in action.

Republicans can try to dismiss each election outcome individually by blaming candidate quality or unique circumstances. Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, utilized the trope, “Special elections are special,” in a Tuesday morning CNN interview to get ahead of potentially embarrassing results.

But taken together, the recent election results paint a picture of a political landscape that has shifted, at least temporarily, away from the GOP.

Republicans effectively admitted as much when Trump pulled New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. If the political environment for the GOP was the same as or better than November, there would have been no risk of Republicans losing a seat that Trump won by 20 points last year.

But Trump specifically said that he didn’t want to risk a special election loss with Republicans’ narrow House majority. That decision looks wiser in light of Tuesday’s results. A similar performance to Florida’s 6th would have been enough to hold New York’s 21st, but a Democratic overperformance closer to what we saw in Florida’s 1st would likely have resulted in a loss.

If there’s some agreement on the changed environment, the natural question is why?

Is the shift a backlash against Trump’s aggressive initial agenda? Or a backlash against Elon Musk’s heavy-handed Department of Government Efficiency team? We know the Democratic overperformance isn’t because voters are in love with the Democratic Party. (They’re not.)

While the results could come down to a combination of factors, the most likely reason is Republicans’ challenge of turning out the Trump coalition to vote when the president isn’t on the ballot. That might be good news for the public reaction to his administration’s initial actions, but it’s bad news for Republicans ahead of a midterm election when Trump won’t be on the ballot.

A Democratic overperformance even close to Tuesday’s results would be enough to deliver them the House majority. Democrats need to gain three seats to get to 218.

Republicans have a stronger hold on the Senate based on the map and the math. But if GOP candidates underperform by a similar margin to the Florida results, then states such as Texas, Ohio, Iowa and Alaska would start to come into reach for Democrats, giving the minority party a chance at taking over the chamber with a net gain of four seats.

There’s enough time for Trump and the GOP to implement policies that they can demonstrate will have a positive impact on voters’ lives ahead of the midterms. A content electorate is less likely to throw out the party in power, no matter whether Trump is on the ballot or not.

But it’s also possible that Trump’s job approval ratings continue to slip to a point at which a majority of voters will be looking to send more Democrats to Washington to act as a check and balance. That would be more in line with a typical midterm.