President Donald Trump may have the world’s attention trained on his war in the Middle East but his party is quietly hemorrhaging support at home ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections.
Democratic and liberal candidates either won or performed massively better than expected in state and local elections across Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri, and Oklahoma on Tuesday night as the president trumpeted a ceasefire in his deeply unpopular conflict with Iran that, by the small hours of Wednesday morning, had already shown signs of falling apart.
Liberal Justice Chris Taylor, backed by the Democratic Party, won the Wisconsin Supreme Court race over Maria Lazar, backed by the GOP, with NBC News’ decision desk calling the race based on Taylor’s “insurmountable” lead.
Her victory, marking a 20-point increase in Democratic performance over the 2020 presidential election, increases the court’s liberal majority after conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley announced her retirement last year.
Largely Hispanic communities in Milwaukee swung hard for the liberal candidate, with a shift of 56 points securing Taylor more than 91 percent of the vote, compared to Kamala Harris’s previous 64 percent, in at least one of the city’s districts, and Lazar trailing with just 9 percent compared to Trump’s 36 percent in 2024.
In Georgia, Democratic candidate Shawn Harris lost the special run-off against Republican Clay Fuller to replace former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once one of Trump’s fiercest supporters in the House and now one of his most vocal critics.
Harris trailed Fuller by 11.8 points but still delivered the largest Democratic overperformance in a House special election since Trump’s return to office, running 25 points ahead of the 2024 presidential polls even though the race was staged in one of Georgia’s deepest red districts.
Other seismic results included a 27-point liberal win on a school board in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where several of the Republican candidate’s own colleagues endorsed her opponent, and another school board flip for a trio of progressives in St. Charles County, Missouri, where conservatives had dominated since the pandemic.
The races come amid mounting MAGA anxiety over a prospective bloodbath in November’s crucial battle for control of the House and Senate. Trump’s overall approval ratings have consistently hovered around 40 percent since late last year, and currently stand at a miserable 36 percent amid his deeply unpopular war in the Middle East, according to The Economist.
Silver Bulletin, a poll tracker site run by statistician Nate Silver, has Democrats up with a 5.5-point lead against Republicans in nationwide voter intention ahead of the midterms, with data journalist G. Elliott Morris writing that number could rise as high as 8 points or even 9 points if current patterns hold, heralding a possible blue wave at the polls later this year.
Tuesday’s performance in state and local races, along with progressive candidates having flipped 30 legislative seats to the GOP’s zero since Trump retook the White House last January, have inspired optimism among Democratic officials.
“The overperformance across the country in special election after special election is a trend that can’t be ignored,” DCCC spokesperson Aidan Johnson said. “Voters are looking for independent and authentic candidates. [It’s] why Democrats are going to take back the House in November.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
