Democrats Crush Expectations in Georgia Special Election, Flip Wisconsin Supreme Court Seat by 20 Points

Georgia: Democrats Post Their Best Trump-Era Special Election Performance

Republican Clay Fuller won the special election for Georgia's 14th Congressional District on Tuesday, but you wouldn't know it was a victory from the numbers. In a district Donald Trump carried by 37 points in 2024, Fuller barely scraped by with an 11-point win over Democrat Shawn Harris.

That 25-point overperformance is now the single best result for Democrats in a special congressional election since Trump first took office in 2017, according to CNN's analysis of more than three dozen races. The previous record was a 23-point overperformance in Florida's 1st District last year.

Even more striking: Democrats improved their vote share between the March 10 first-round voting and Tuesday's runoff, jumping from 40% to 44%. That happened despite—or perhaps because of—the Iran war that began in early March, and despite national Republicans making the unusual decision to pour money into what should have been a safe seat.

The seat formerly belonged to Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has recently broken with Trump over his handling of the Iran conflict. Whether her criticism played a role in depressing Republican turnout remains unclear, but the results speak for themselves.

Half of Democrats' top 10 special election overperformances have now come since the 2024 election. That is not a coincidence. It is a pattern.

Wisconsin: A 20-Point Blowout in America's Top Swing State

While Georgia grabbed headlines, the real earthquake happened in Wisconsin.

Democratic-aligned candidate Chris Taylor demolished Republican-aligned Maria Lazar by roughly 20 points in a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The victory expands the court's liberal majority from 4-3 to 5-2, giving progressives a firewall against Republican attempts to manipulate election rules or gerrymander legislative maps.

To put that margin in perspective: Wisconsin has been decided by less than one percentage point in each of the last three presidential elections. A 20-point statewide victory in such a closely divided battleground is virtually unheard of. It marks the largest margin in a competitive Wisconsin Supreme Court race since 2000.

Taylor didn't just win—she flipped historically Republican counties. Jefferson County, which Trump won by 16 points two years ago, went for Taylor. So did Ozaukee County in the Milwaukee suburbs, which Trump carried by 10 points in 2024.

What This Means

These results are not flukes. They are data points in a clear trend: voters are rejecting Trumpism at the ballot box whenever they get the chance.

The Georgia race is particularly telling because it shows Democrats gaining ground even as Republicans spent money trying to shore up what should have been an unlosable seat. The Wisconsin result is even more damning—a 20-point margin in a swing state suggests the bottom is falling out for the GOP with suburban and exurban voters.

Republicans will try to spin these losses as inevitable in off-year elections, or blame them on low turnout, or point to the fact that they technically won in Georgia. None of that changes the fundamental reality: in district after district, state after state, voters are rejecting Trump-aligned candidates by margins that would have been unthinkable just months ago.

The Iran war is clearly weighing on the administration. Trump's approval ratings have cratered. And now Republicans are watching supposedly safe seats become competitive while swing-state judicial races turn into landslides.

If these trends hold through the 2026 midterms, Democrats won't just take back the House. They'll run the table.