For months, political pundits have been asking the same question: Do Democrats really have the energy to win the midterms?
The answer is already showing up in special elections across the country.
Since Trump’s re-election in 2024, Democrats have flipped 28 seats in state legislatures while Republicans have flipped none. Ten of those victories came in special elections in red and blue battleground legislatures across the country.
According to The Downballot’s special elections Big Board for the 2025-26 cycle, the average district holding a special election in 2026 is voting roughly 11 points more Democratic than it did in 2024, and roughly 7 points higher than 2020.
Here are just a few examples of the Democratic upsets in recent special elections:
-> In March 2026, Democrats flipped a Republican-held seat in Arkansas by electing Alex Holladay in a special election for House District 70 — a state Donald Trump has won three times.
-> In January 2026, Democrat and machinists’ union leader Taylor Rehmet flipped a Texas Senate seat in a district Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024, winning 57% of the vote despite being heavily outspent by Republicans.
-> In November 2025, States Win candidates Theresa Gillespie Isom, Justin Crosby, and Johnny DuPree flipped seats from red to blue in Mississippi, ending the Republican supermajority in the state Senate.
Special elections are low-turnout, off-cycle contests that measure something simple: which side has enough energy to organize, mobilize voters, and win when attention is scarce. Because of Democrats’ overperformance since the 2024 general election, Republicans are being forced to defend seats they once took for granted.
This is exactly why Republicans are pouring everything they have into the next major special election: a race that could determine control of the Michigan Senate.
In 2022, Democrats flipped the Michigan State Senate for the first time in nearly 40 years, ending decades of Republican control and creating a narrow governing majority. With that majority, lawmakers repealed Michigan’s 1931 abortion ban, strengthened civil rights protections for the LGBTQ+ community, and made Michigan the first state in nearly six decades to repeal the anti-union “right-to-work” laws.
Now that majority hangs on a single race.
In just eight weeks, voters will decide a special election for Michigan’s 35th Senate District. The seat has been vacant since then–state Senator Kristen McDonald Rivet left the legislature to take her seat in the U.S. House.
If Republicans manage to flip the seat, the chamber will be evenly split.
States Win is proud to endorse Democrat Chedrick Greene, a firefighter of nearly 30 years and a Marine Corps reservist running for Michigan’s 35th Senate District. He is running on a platform focused on universal pre-K, common-sense gun safety, good-paying union jobs, and more.
His opponent, Republican Jason Tunney, is backed by Americans for Prosperity and other high-profile Republican leaders. He is campaigning on a platform that includes expanding school voucher programs that could divert public funds from public schools, restoring Michigan’s anti-union “right-to-work” law, and repealing the state’s clean energy mandate requiring utilities to reach 100 percent clean electricity by 2040.
This race has already become a must-watch contest in Michigan and across the country.
Dick DeVos, husband of former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, congratulates Republican Jason Tunney.
Democrats may be performing strongly in special elections nationwide, but Michigan is a reminder that momentum can disappear quickly when we take our eyes off the ball. After Democrats won a historic trifecta in 2022, Republicans clawed back control of the Michigan House in the 2024 election. Since then, House Republicans have slowed or blocked progress on priorities like stronger oversight of ICE in communities, the state budget, paid sick leave, and minimum wage.
Holding this seat will preserve the Democratic majority in the Michigan Senate and maintain a critical blue firewall against House Republicans.
But the lesson from Michigan is this: progress only lasts if we defend it.
If Democrats want the momentum we’re seeing in special elections to carry into the midterms, we must fight for this seat with everything we have.
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