Cnn
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Democrats have continued a trend to high surreform in Outside cycle elections on TuesdayMaking two -digit gains on the sidelines during their presentation in 2024 in the two districts of the Florida Congress and in the whole State in Wisconsin. This trend has appeared at least in part because the basis of Democrats is more and more likely to vote during these elections, but a CNN analysis shows that Tuesday’s results can reflect more than a simple deeply committed base.
Solid results in special elections do not necessarily lead to future electoral success. Democrats followed a Solid special special election chain At the start of Trump’s first term with resounding victories in the middle of the 2018 mid -midfielderHowever, did not succeed in the general elections of 2024 despite the outperformance in the special elections leading to November.
CNN examined the 12 special house elections between June 2022 Supreme Court The decision that canceled ROE c. Wade and November 2024, which involved a single democratic and republican candidate and found that the average margin was 10.8 points more favorable to the Democrat than in the mid-term margin of 2022 in the district.
The Democratic candidates of the two Florida races succeeded better than the average on Tuesday, with the November margin of the Gay Valimont Republicans by reducing the 1st Florida district by 17.3 points and Josh Weil tightening the advantage of the 19 -point GOP in the race to replace Mike Waltz in the 6th district of Florida. In Wisconsin, the judge supported by Democrat Susan Crawford went beyond the margin of Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election of almost 11 points.
The margins of special elections are notoriously volatile, and it is difficult to say what these results mean for the future.
Democratic supporters hope that they could foreshadow a high performance halfway through 2026. Republicans could counter that democratic advantage in the outside cycle elections will probably not hold in higher participation competitions such as mid-term. But there are signals from the Tuesday elections that bear the observation.
The electorate in Florida districts was considerably more democratic than in November 2024. In the County of Escambia, for example, the registered Republicans were more numerous than the registered Democrats of more than 21.1 points in November. Tuesday, this advantage fell to 11.3 points. Valimont in fact overthrew the county, which she lost by more than 14 points in November and that no democrat has won in a race for a federal office since 2006, when Senator Bill Nelson won a re -election.
Although Wisconsin has no registration of parties, there are indications that the electorate was more democratic at 2024. The counties who voted for Harris, in particular the democratic Bashold Dane, generally held a higher part of their participation in 2024 than the rural and more republican counties.
A democratic basis that is more inclined to reveal itself could be an advantage for the party in the middle of 2026. While mid-term has a higher participation rate than special elections, they always tend to cause a lower participation rate than the presidential elections.
… And Tuesday races had an unusually high overall participation rate for the out -of -cycle elections
According to a CNN analysis of the participation rate in these 12 specials of the house of June 2022 in the general election of 2024, the participation rate of the same districts in relation to the rate of participation in mid-term of 2022 varied considerably. The total voting bulletins deposited during the special elections of June 2024 in the 6th district of the Ohio Congress, for example, represented only 21% of the total mid-term of 2022. An election of February 2024 in the 3rd district of the New York Congress, on the other hand, was 64% the rate of November 2022, And an election of November 2023 in the 2nd district of the Utah Congress had 61% the participation rate of November 2022.
Democratic success in these specials seems to be linked to the level of participation. While the Democrat has outperformed 26 points in the lower Ohio election, the Democratic candidate in the UTAH elections reduced the margin by only 2.4 relative points halfway through. In the five races where the number of votes expressed was less than 40% of the rate of participation in mid-term of 2022, the Democratic candidates improved the margins of 2022 on average of 15.1 points, and none of these races had surformance less than 7.5 points. In the seven races where the special electoral participation rate was greater than 40% of the mid-term participation rate, the average democratic gain was 7.7 points.
This model did not last on Tuesday, when the candidates aligned by Democrat have succeeded much better than their electoral counterparts, even with the rate of participation in the top of what is typical of a special election. Almost two-thirds of the votes were expressed in the 6th district of the Florida Congress compared to 2022 (a higher rate than the 12 previous special elections), and the participation rate in the 1st Congress district was almost 60% of the half-rate participation rate (higher than all previous races except two). But there have been other solid performance with a relatively high participation rate. Democrat Tom Suozzi outperformed 15.6 points during the special elections to replace George Santos in the 3rd district of the New York Congress, although his 8 -point margin is only 4.4 points more than his margin in November 2024.
Crawford’s decisive victory in Wisconsin also occurred in the midst of surprisingly high participation. In other recent races in the Supreme Court, the participation rate varied from 1 to 1.8 million voting bulletins. In this year’s race, however, more than 2.3 million voters voted, almost 90% of the total voting ballots deposited in the Senate race in 2022.
Crawford was only 9,000 shy votes from the total of Democratic candidate Mandela Barnes in the Senate race in 2022 despite the fact that nearly 300,000 less voting bulletins are deposited. To put the magnitude of his victory in context, even if the participation rate on Tuesday had equaled the participation rate in mid-term of 2022, Schimel would have needed almost all additional votes (91.3%) to win the race.
While the Republicans are concerned about the dissemination of their lower property base, Tuesday’s elections also made another warning sign: the potential for considerable crossing voting, the republican voters who have made ballots for democratic candidates.
More than 36,000 registered Republicans have made ballots in the county of Escambia in the 1st district of Florida, but the republican candidate Jimmy Patronis only obtained 35,829 votes. This means that even if he has received no vote of registered democrats or people registered without affiliation of the party, he has lost at least a few hundred republican votes. If patronis had received 5% of democratic votes and divided all other non -Republican voters uniformly, it would have lost almost a fifth of the registered republican votes.
This dynamic took place in the district. Shortly before the closing of polls, reports from the county elections suggested that almost 58% of the ballots placed in the race came from registered republicans, but patronis ultimately paid only 56.9% of the votes.
This was not the case during the 2024 general elections. The Republican candidates then received a share of voting which exceeded the registered republican participation rate. In the county of Escambia, 50.8% of the votes came from registered Republicans, while the Republican candidates Matt Gaetz, Rick Scott and Donald Trump received 57.1%, 60.9% and 59.0% of the votes, respectively.