As 2025 got underway, there was a closely watched state Senate special election in Iowa, in a race Republicans expected to win. It was, after all, held in a district that Donald Trump had won a few months early by 21 points. A Democratic candidate nevertheless managed to flip the seat from red to blue.
This week, it happened again. NBC News reported on Democrats flipping another state Senate seat in Iowa:
Iowa Democrats scored a significant victory Tuesday by flipping a Republican seat in a special election and breaking the GOP supermajority in the state Senate. Catelin Drey won the Sioux City-area district with 55% of the vote to Republican opponent Christopher Prosch’s 44%, according to unofficial results with all precincts reporting.
As a practical matter, in Iowa’s state capitol, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has relied on her party’s two-thirds supermajority in the chamber to confirm her nominees, but thanks to the latest Democratic victory, that supermajority is now gone. (Drey will succeed Republican Sen. Rocky De Witt who died of cancer in June.)
But part of what makes the results so notable is the partisan circumstances: As The Downballot’s David Nir explained in a detailed post-election analysis, this latest Democratic special election victory came in a red seat in a red state: Trump carried this same district by 11 points last fall.
This week, Democrats prevailed there anyway.
But even more important in a national context is the familiarity of these circumstances: In elections and special elections throughout the country this year, results like these have become rather common lately, with Democrats winning races they were expected to lose, while other Democrats have won races they were expected to win by enormous margins.
In one memorable example, Wisconsin held a closely watched state Supreme Court race in the spring, and Republican megadonor Elon Musk said this one contest could determine “the future of America and Western Civilization.” He added that he believed the race was likely to “affect the entire destiny of humanity.”
Soon after, the Democratic-backed candidate won — by double digits.
All told, according to The Downballots’ number-crunching, Democratic candidates have run roughly 16 points ahead of the 2024 presidential results on average across 34 special elections this year. For months, we’ve heard a lot about Democrats and their “brand.” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado told NBC News a few months ago that his party’s brand is “problematic.” Around the same time, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said the Democratic brand is “toxic.” Days earlier, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania told Politico, “If we don’t get our s— together, then we are going to be in a permanent minority.” Maybe so, but while some Democratic officials complain about the party’s reputation, Democratic candidates have been doing pretty well lately. In the aftermath of Election Day 2024, the conventional wisdom suggested not only that Republicans had entered an era of electoral dominance, but also that Democratic voters were demoralized, disheartened and prepared to withdraw from civic life for a long while. The more Democratic candidates overperform in 2025 elections, the more those assumptions unravel. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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