It\u2019s not every day that national Democrats and Republicans flip out over the results of a special election runoff for a state Senate seat in Texas (or anywhere else).<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening after Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss by more than 14 percentage points Saturday night in the Lone Star State\u2019s Ninth Senate District (SD-9), which covers the northern part of Tarrant County in and around Ft. Worth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe results from the special election in Texas are even worse for Republicans than they look,\u201d Dan Pfeiffer, a former Barack Obama adviser, wrote on social media<\/a>. \u201cEvery Republican on the ballot should be scared s***less.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed,\u201d agreed Florida\u2019s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a>. \u201cRepublicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms.\u201d<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Nov. 3, President Trump will face midterm elections nationwide. Right now, the Republican Party narrowly controls both the U.S. House (by a margin of 218 to 214 ) and the U.S. Senate (by a margin of 53 seats to 47 seats). The incumbent president\u2019s party almost always loses seats<\/a> when voters return to the polls to judge his first two years in office. Sometimes, the backlash is so pervasive that the party loses almost every close contest \u2014 a phenomenon known as a \u201cwave\u201d election.<\/p>\n So could Nov. 3 bring a \u201cblue wave\u201d? That\u2019s the argument Democrats are starting to make after Rehmet\u2019s upset win in Texas \u2014 and it\u2019s the outcome that Republicans are starting to fear. But there\u2019s still a long way to go before Election Day. Here\u2019s what we know so far, and what we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n 14 points is a lot \u2014 particularly in a district like SD-9<\/p>\n Northern Tarrant County isn\u2019t just any old place. For one thing, it\u2019s in Texas \u2014 a historically Republican state where Democrats are perpetually promising, and failing, to really compete. For another, it\u2019s considered an emerging bellwether, i.e., the kind of area where Democrats have to do better if they ever want to win statewide (and improve their national fortunes as well).<\/p>\n Home to major defense contractors \u2014 and a hotbed of tea party activism during the Obama years \u2014 the district hasn\u2019t sent a Democrat to the state Senate since the early 1980s<\/a>. And Trump won it just two years ago by more than 17 points.<\/p>\n That means on Saturday, the district swung nearly 32 points to the left when it chose Rehmet, a machinist union leader and Air Force veteran, over Wambsganss, a well-connected local political activist.<\/p>\n Special elections come with caveats \u2014 but fewer here than elsewhere<\/p>\n Trying to divine the outcome of a national midterm election from the results in one state Senate district is a fool\u2019s errand \u2014 especially nine months out. Skeptics will note that much can change between now and then; that the sample size is small; and that the electorate isn\u2019t representative.<\/p>\n The skeptics have a point. Turnout was low on Saturday \u2013 under 100,000 votes. In recent years, Republicans have developed a habit of showing up when Trump is on the ballot and staying home when he\u2019s not. As a result, Democrats have tended to overperform in precisely this sort of race.<\/p>\n But there were some mitigating circumstances in SD-9 that could make it less of an outlier than other special elections.<\/p>\n Wambsganss raised more than five times as much money as Rehmet, according to the latest filings<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Republican National Committee, top statewide Republicans and even Trump all tried to help Wambsganss win. (\u201cTo all Voters in Texas\u2019s 9th State Senate District: GET OUT AND VOTE for a phenomenal Candidate, Leigh Wambsganss,\u201d Trump wrote on social media Saturday<\/a>, in one of three separate<\/a> posts<\/a> on the subject. \u201cYou can win this Election for Leigh, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement.\u201d)<\/p>\n Yet the district still swung away from the GOP by nearly 32 points.<\/p>\n Then there are Saturday\u2019s actual voting patterns to consider. According to Ross Hunt,<\/a> a Republican pollster and consultant in Texas, \u201cRepublicans did not lose the TX SD-9 runoff because of low GOP turnout: They lost because almost all of the independents and some of the Republicans voted Dem.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, Rehmet\u2019s upset had more to do with how people voted than which people voted. The electorate was still 16 percentage points more Republican (51%) than Democratic (35%). But Wambsganss performed much worse than Trump because lots of \u201csoft\u201d Trump voters \u2014 moderate Republicans and Republican-leaning independents \u2014 broke hard against her. If the trend continues, it spells trouble for the GOP in November.<\/p>\n SD-9 isn\u2019t an isolated incident<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s GOP has been losing races like SD-9 for the last year.<\/p>\n According to leading political data journalist G. Elliot Morris<\/a>, \u201cDemocrats have flipped eight Republican-held state legislative seats in special elections across five states\u201d since Trump returned to the Oval Office \u2014 while \u201cRepublicans have flipped zero Democratic seats.\u201d<\/p>\n Saturday\u2019s victory in SD-9 was the biggest flip so far. But on average, these seats have been swinging to Democrats by 19 points \u2014 a sizable margin.<\/p>\n The president\u2019s own numbers aren\u2019t helping his party. Before Trump took office, more independents said they expected Trump to change America for the better (41%) than said they expected him to change America for the worse (34%), a Yahoo\/YouGov poll found<\/a>.<\/p>\n But today, a full 57% of independents say Trump has changed America for the worse while just 22% say he\u2019s changed America for the better \u2014 a 42-point swing away from the president.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s overall job-approval rating is as poor as it\u2019s ever been<\/a>, and immigration is becoming more of a weakness than a strength<\/a> amid his ongoing mass-deportation crackdown in Minneapolis and elsewhere.<\/p>\n All of which suggests that \u201ca big wave is gathering for 2026,\u201d according to Morris. \u201cThere is at present no question of the existence of this wave,\u201d he adds, \u201cjust its height.\u201d<\/p>\n Things could change between now and November, of course. But when Morris overlaid the SD-9 results on the national map \u2014 and the national electorate \u2014 they corresponded to a 7-point Democratic victory in the U.S. House (which would be more than enough to flip the chamber).<\/p>\n