We are now at the point in the election cycle where everyone — partisans on both sides and political commentators alike — try to read too much into too little.
In this case, we had special elections Tuesday that were widely viewed as an early test of the Trump administration. The results were not particularly good for Republicans. They won two solidly red congressional districts in Florida by wide margins, but those margins were greatly reduced from years past. In Wisconsin, a liberal candidate won the Supreme Court race, despite Elon Musk spending an estimated $25 million on behalf of the conservative candidate.
“Republicans see ‘warning signs’ for the midterms after GOP underperformances,” Politico headlined.
Next year’s midterms are still 19 months or so away, depending on how you count early voting. With apologies to Robert Frost, we have miles — and more than a year — to go before we can sleep on that one.
In the meantime, we have elections here in Virginia — early voting for the June primaries is just weeks away, then we have a fall election to pick a new governor and the House of Delegates.
Based on these results in Florida and Wisconsin, should Virginia Republicans worry? Yes.
Should Virginia Democrats feel emboldened? I would not advise that.
Let me explain. Republicans should worry because political parties should always worry about something. Politics is a dynamic environment; things are always changing. Parties that start to feel confident often find themselves out of power. The question is whether Virginia Republicans should worry more today than they did a few days ago. Perhaps so, but allow me to offer some cautionary notes all around.
1. State elections are different from federal elections: How much will that help insulate Virginia Republicans?
By definition, federal elections — the congressional elections in Florida — are going to focus on Washington issues, and right now, President Donald Trump bestrides the nation’s capital like a Colossus. Democrats can reap whatever political gain they can by focusing on Trump in federal elections; that may be harder in a state election. At this point in our history, I’m not sure people expect much from the federal government; that makes it easy for some of the deep red and deep blue districts around the country to elect some of the clownish figures we often see parading around in Washington. Expectations are low. For many people, the impacts of the federal government aren’t particularly visible. (Government cuts may make them more visible, but that’s a different matter.)
By contrast, the impacts of state government are clearer: People expect the state to fund schools and take care of roads. Those are state universities and state road crews. There’s a more practical dimension to state government, which has to produce a regular budget and keep it balanced, things that seem only faint notions across the Potomac. This practicality gives Virginia Republicans an opportunity to try to deflect Democrats’ Trump-themed attacks. Now, whether those attempts to deflect things work is an entirely different matter. Still, the different nature of state elections means we may not be able to draw a straight line from Tuesday’s results in Florida and Wisconsin to November’s results in Virginia.
A contrarian point of view: That Wisconsin Supreme Court election was a state election, and it wasn’t particularly close.
2. Virginia voters have a history of voting against Trump anyway: How much more can Democrats count on?
Here’s where things become more worrisome for Virginia Republicans. Trump lost the state three years in a row. Running in alignment with Trump won’t help Republicans, but running against Trump could help Democrats. We already know what happened in Virginia the last time Trump was president: Democrats made big gains, more than even they expected. Right now, Democrats hold a 51-49 edge in the House of Delegates, but 58 seats are in districts that Kamala Harris won last year. Theoretically, then, it’s possible for Democrats to make big gains in the House this fall. What we don’t know at this point: Will Virginia in 2025 replicate Virginia in 2017, when voters who normally opted out of state elections turned out to vote for Democrats? Or will Virginia in 2015 replicate Virginia in 2021, when Republicans saw a big surge of turnout in rural areas that boosted Glenn Youngkin into the governor’s office?
One difference between 2017 and now is that Trump is doing a lot more. Trump’s large-scale reductions in the federal workforce will definitely have an impact on Virginia, which has more federal workers than any other state except California. Will that spark more voter backlash than he might normally inspire?
3. Special elections and midterms typically go against the president’s party: So why are we surprised?
Yes, Republicans underperformed and Democrats overperformed — Republican margins in Florida were cut in half. However, the party in power often does poorly in special elections and midterms. Republicans ought to be worried anyway for that reason, given their slim margin in the U.S. House (although Democrats have a poor map to defend in next year’s Senate elections). What we don’t know yet is how voters will feel come fall 2026. Right now, there’s a lot of economic uncertainty, much of it brought on by Trump himself with his trade wars. If the economy really does go south, there’s little that can help Republicans. If the economy rights itself, then Republicans have a strong talking point to use to try to mute historic midterm terms.
4. What if these trends hold? Here’s what that would look like in Virginia.
In 2024, Republican Matt Gaetz (who resigned to become attorney general but then withdrew) won Florida’s 1st Congressional District with 66.0% of the vote — and a margin of 32 percentage points over the Democratic candidate. On Tuesday, Republican Jimmy Patronis won with 56.9% of the vote — and a margin of 14.6 percentage points. That’s a drop of 17.4 percentage points.
In 2024, Republican Mike Waltz (now Trump’s national security adviser and the creator of the Signal group chat) won Florida’s 6th Congressional District with 66.5% of the vote — and a margin of 33 percentage points over the Democratic candidate. On Tuesday, Republican Randy Fine won with 56.7% of the vote — and a margin of 14 percentage points. That’s a drop of 19 percentage points.
Just for fun, let’s see what happens if we take the results of Virginia’s 2024 congressional elections and subtract 17.4 to 19 percentage points from the margin of each winning Republican. When I’m done, I’ll explain why that’s not particularly valid, but let’s do it anyway just for illustrative purposes.
In the 1st District, Rob Wittman won with 56.3% — and a margin of 12.8 percentage points. Apply either of those Florida decreases to his district and he’d lose.
In the 2nd District, Jen Kiggans won with 50.7% — and a margin of 3.8 percentage points. She’s vulnerable regardless but would obviously lose under these Florida results.
In the 5th District, John McGuire won with 57.3% — and a margin of 14.9 percentage points. He’d also lose if these Florida trends applied to the 5th District.
In the 6th District, Ben Cline won with 63.1% — and a margin of 28.4 percentage points. He’d be safe, even with the protesters now gathering weekly outside his Roanoke office.
In the 9th District, Morgan Griffith won with 72.5% — and a margin of 45.1 percentage points. I find it impossible to envision a scenario in which any Democrat topples him.
Under this Florida math, three of the state’s five Republican House members would lose. That’s a wipeout, and if it happened, it would be part of a Democratic tsunami nationwide. Now, here’s why I don’t think this is valid math (even though I’ve seen some Democrats using this). First of all, midterms are always different from presidential years — the turnout is lower. That turnout used to be older and more Republican. As the parties have realigned, Democrats have picked up more regular voters and Republicans have picked up more casual voters, so that might start to skew midterms toward Democrats.
That’s not the real reason, though, that I don’t think you can project these margins to 2026: That’s an entirely different election. Look at how much has happened in just the 10-plus weeks since Trump took office. For better or for worse, Trump is a whirlwind. How much more will happen between now and next year? Lots, most likely. Democrats assume that all those things will produce negative results, and maybe they will, but we just don’t know yet. “Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind,” Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly said. We will have lots of outside influences between now and then. The economy is a big one. Foreign actors are another. Republicans should be wary that these trends replicate, but Democrats can’t be certain they will.
5. Have Democrats learned the lessons from their 2024 defeat? Will these results make that harder?
This is more of a question for 2028 than 2026, or even Virginia in 2025. There’s no evidence yet that Democrats have figured out why they lost working-class voters so badly last year, or what they will do to win them back. For now, maybe they don’t need to; for special elections and midterms, maybe it’s sufficient for them simply to be anti-Trump. For the long term, though, that’s not a winning strategy. Harris was anti-Trump, and she lost every key swing state. It’s possible that Democrats get so excited about the electoral gains they posted Tuesday that they don’t think they need to do anything special. Would it have been better for Democrats in the long run to have gotten plastered Tuesday to force a reexamination that many party leaders seem to be avoiding?
6. What lessons do Republicans learn from these elections?
We used to say there are two sides to every election. Whether that saying applies to bitcoin, we may soon find out. Democrats may think that these results show an anti-Trump message is powerful; what’s the Republican takeaway? I’ve been skeptical that Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the likely Republican candidate for governor, has the right formulation on how to address Trump’s job cuts in Virginia. Her reaction so far has been to be dismissive of them. As I pointed out in Monday’s column, that did not work so well for Republicans in Martinsville and Henry County in 2001 after the textile industry collapsed there. That year, a region that had been trending Republican turned back (temporarily) to Democrats, who were more sympathetic to the plight of laid-off workers. Will these results prompt Earle-Sears to craft a new message?
7. Will Musk get involved in Virginia’s elections?
Musk put himself front and center in Wisconsin, and that didn’t go over well. What will Trump, in particular, think of that? Has Musk made himself a political liability? More to the point, how will Musk (and Trump, more generally) see Virginia? They could write off a Democratic victory as the expected thing in a purple-to-blue state — but a big Democratic victory in Virginia might raise further questions about how voters are reacting to the administration. They’d certainly like to avoid that. Conversely, a Republican victory in Virginia would be read, rightly or wrongly, as a validation of what Trump’s doing. Given all those considerations, to what degree do Trump and Musk get involved in Virginia?
Virginia has no limits on campaign contributions. Musk could write every Virginian a check if he wanted to and be within the law, as long as he disclosed all that. Will he spend freely in the Old Dominion and, if so, how will that go over? I’m historically skeptical that money plays as big a role in politics as many people think it does; Tuesday’s results certainly show once again that the best-financed side doesn’t always win. My response to any Musk intervention in Virginia is mostly to shrug and wait to see what happens, but I know many Democrats are terrified of his money — although they may be less so after these results. Likewise, Republicans may want to wonder whether Wisconsin might have gone in their favor if Musk hadn’t gotten so involved. In a purple state like Wisconsin, that court election should have been closer than it was. Why wasn’t it?
The Florida and Wisconsin elections will give people nationally much to chatter about. Meanwhile, here in Virginia, we have an important deadline upon us: Thursday is the deadline for candidates to file petitions if they want to make the ballot for a June primary. We’ll be watching to see how many do, especially the two Republicans, Amanda Chase and Dave LaRock, who want to challenge Earle-Sears.
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