Low Favorability? Fuhgeddaboudit. Democrats Are Crushing It at the Ballot Box 

“The Democratic Brand Is Toxic in Too Many States.”  

“Why Democrats Keep Losing Support Even as Trump Falters Badly.”  

“Democrats viewed less favorably than GOP and ICE—and only Iran does worse: poll.”  

These are 2026 headlines, capturing the poll-driven conventional wisdom: Donald Trump may be unpopular, but Democrats are, too. 

But these hot takes ignore a crucial data point: Democrats are on a historic hot streak. 

Since Trump’s second inauguration, 30 state legislative seats have flipped in special and regular elections. That’s 30 to the Democrats and zero for the Republicans. The most recent pair came from Florida, a state that has bedeviled Democrats, and includes the house seat where Mar-a-Lago is located. Other wins have covered the map: Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. (The Mississippi flips were buoyed by a court-mandated redistricting.) 

No such shutout has occurred in at least 15 years. Ballotpedia has tracked state legislative flips in special elections since 2010. In every year, each major party scored at least one flip, except for 2010 when neither party did. That is, until 2025. (Whether Democrats can avoid coughing up one of their seats this year depends on two upcoming specials in Democratic-held districts: one in Massachusetts on Tuesday and one in Michigan on May 5. Five other specials in Republican-held districts are on the calendar before November.) 

Are state legislative special election trends an indicator of what will happen in U.S. congressional midterm elections? The evidence says: yes.  

In the 2013-2014 cycle, Republican state legislative flips outstripped Democratic flips 10-2, and in November 2014, Republicans flipped nine U.S. Senate seats to seize control. 

For the next midterm cycle, Democrats romped in state legislative special elections, with 26 flips to seven for Republicans. They proceeded to flip 40 U.S. House seats. 

And in 2021 and 2022, Democrats and Republicans each flipped four state legislative seats in special elections, which was followed by a relatively mild midterm outcome for the ruling Democrats: nine lost U.S. House seats—well below the average midterm loss for a president’s party, though it did cede control of the chamber—and a single seat gain in the U.S. Senate. 

If Democrats are doing so well at the ballot box, why do they perform slightly worse than Republicans on favorability? Most likely because Democratic voters are quicker to crab about their party leaders than Republican voters. And intensity matters. When you break down approval numbers with phrases like “strongly approve” and “strongly disapprove,” the enthusiasm is on the Democratic side.  

Instead of debating what Democrats should do to rehabilitate the brand, look at what Democrats have done to capture Republican seats. 

Unsurprisingly, “affordability” is a touchstone in the victorious Democratic campaigns, sometimes with a local angle. In hurricane-ravaged Florida, state Senate candidate Brian Nathan and state House candidate Emily Gregory focused on high property insurance premiums. Running in states with Republican governors and no state income tax, Texas Senate candidate Taylor Rehmet and New Hampshire House candidate Bobbi Boudman railed against soaring municipal property taxes. 

Health care costs remain a fat target. The webpage for Arkansas state House candidate Alex Holladay blares, “I’m laser-focused on bringing down costs and protecting access to healthcare.” He touted his background as a medical school recruiter and pledged to attract more doctors to Arkansas. Over in Georgia, Eric Gisler’s website declared, “You shouldn’t have to drive an hour or go broke just to see your doctor,” and he proposed several policy changes, including Medicaid expansion and a low-premium public insurance option. The Georgia Recorder reported that after Gisler won, he credited “his focus on issues like health care access and the rising cost of living, which he said likely appealed to some Republican voters,” and knocked his opponent’s “tired MAGA talking points.” 

Last August, Iowa state Senate candidate Catelin Drey faced a barrage of culture war-focused Republican attack ads. One TV ad asked, “What planet is Catelin Drey from?” using an old photo of her with pink hair, falsely claiming “she wants to let illegal aliens vote in our elections,” and dubbing her “Kooky Catelin Drey.” Drey neutralized the attack with her own ad, laughing off the hair jab with “I think I looked great with pink hair, but the upkeep was exhausting.” Then she pivoted to a distilled agenda: “My ‘kooky’ ideas are fully funding our public schools, making housing and child care more affordable, and putting more money back in the pockets of working Iowans.”  

Successful Democratic state legislative candidates have generally steered clear of social issues. However, Drey put a list of priorities on her campaign homepage, including “Bodily Autonomy: Allow patients and doctors to make educated decisions about treatment without interference from the government.” (Before her electoral bid, Drey founded a pro-reproductive rights group, Moms for Iowa.) Still, her ads focused more on school funding, housing costs, plus health and child care. 

None of these Democrats reinvented the party. For decades, Democrats have run on making necessities like education, insurance, and housing affordable for the working class. And in the current political environment, it’s easy for Democrats to blame Republicans for rising costs. 

Sure, the Democratic Party has generational and ideological divides. Contentious Senate primaries loom in Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, and maybe Iowa. But Texas Democrats came together quickly after the very tense and expensive James Talarico-Jasmine Crockett contest for the U.S. Senate nomination, because Democratic ideological divides tend not to run deep, and Lone Star Democrats, like Democrats everywhere, are united in wanting to beat back MAGA.  

Democratic challenges pale in comparison to those facing the GOP, which has jettisoned its principles, attaching itself to a president who promised to lower prices, then delivered steep tariffs and an unexplained war of choice in the Mideast that sent prices at the pump soaring. The proof that Democrats are on the march is in the voting. Any analysis of the midterms must start with that fact.   

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