Heading into last week’s state legislative special election in Florida, Republicans had reason to be cautiously optimistic. The race was in a Palm Beach district that Donald Trump won by 11 points in 2024 — it’s the same district that houses Mar-a-Lago — and it has been represented by Republicans for years.

Ahead of the special election, the president tried to rally support for the GOP candidate, but it didn’t matter. Democrat Emily Gregory narrowly won anyway, flipping the seat from red to blue.

On the same day, roughly 200 miles away, there was a state Senate special election in the Tampa area, in a district Trump won by 7 points. It took a while to nail down the results, but as this week got underway, the final outcome delivered yet another round of bad news to Republican officials. The New York Times reported:

Democrats on Monday officially claimed a second upset in Florida’s recent special elections when The Associated Press declared an electrical workers union leader to be the winner of a tight state senate contest in reliably Republican West Tampa.

Brian Nathan, a Navy veteran and member of a new cadre of working class Democrats, will join Emily Gregory, a small-business owner with a public-health background, as upstart Democrats in Tallahassee.

In a Fox News interview last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about the special elections and whether he sees them as “a canary in the coal mine” ahead of the midterm elections in the fall. “These special elections are a one-off,” the Louisiana Republican replied. “They’re anomalies.”

To be sure, that might make GOP leaders feel better. Some of them might even believe it. But when the same thing keeps happening, it becomes a lot tougher to see them as one-off anomalies.

Consider what we’ve seen so far this year. In January, two Democratic candidates won lopsided victories in special elections in Minnesota and restored the state House to an even partisan split.

Soon after, in Texas, Republicans invested a considerable amount of resources to keep a state Senate seat in the suburbs of Fort Worth. They failed, as Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a union leader and Air Force veteran, won a double-digit victory in a district Trump won by 17 points in 2024. (The president personally tried to rally support for the GOP candidate, but then pretended he didn’t after she lost badly.)

In early February, Republicans in Louisiana saw a unique opportunity to flip a state legislative seat from blue to red — in a district Trump won by 13 points — but when voters had their say, the Democratic candidate prevailed by 24 points.

In early March, a Democratic state legislative candidate flipped a seat in Arkansas. A week later, a Democratic state legislative candidate flipped a seat in New Hampshire, in an outcome that The New Hampshire Union Leader called “stunning” and a “big upset” given the Republican advantage in the district.

With the Tampa results in mind, The Downballot noted in its latest analysis that Democrats have now flipped 30 seats from red to blue in special elections since Trump returned to the White House. Over that same period, the number of seats flipped from blue to red remains zero.

Some will no doubt argue that it’s best not to read too much into a special election held in the winter, several months before November’s races. It’s a fair point. But what matters is how the results fit into the broader political landscape. Republicans are tied to an unpopular president, a growing number of their congressional members are retiring, key elements of the GOP agenda are facing an intensifying public backlash, and they keep losing special elections, including in contests they expected to win.

If party insiders aren’t concerned about their standing ahead of this year’s midterm elections, they’re not paying close enough attention.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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