Blue wave forming? Democrat's Texas romp may be biggest sign yet.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump sounded the alarm on the eve of the special election runoff for a state Senate seat in Texas.
"Make a plan to GET OUT AND VOTE," Trump wrote in a Friday, Jan. 30 post on Truth Social, urging his supporters to vote for the "phenomenal" Republican nominee, Leigh Wambsganss to "KEEP TEXAS RED!"
But two days later ‒ after the Democrat, Taylor Rehmet, trounced the Republican candidate in reliably red Senate District 9 by 14 percentage points ‒ the president acted like he didn't know there was a race.
More: Democrat flips Texas Senate seat, will represent district Trump won
"I didn't hear about it. Somebody ran, where?" Trump said on Feb. 1 when asked for his reaction. "I'm not involved in that. That's a local Texas race."
What transpired in Texas Senate District 9 ‒ which includes parts of Forth Worth and its surrounding suburbs in Tarrant County ‒ was arguably the largest shockwave yet from a slew of recent elections , at both the state and federal levels, in which Democrats have vastly over performed compared to their 2024 numbers.
Trump carried the Lone Star State district during his 2024 presidential run by 17 percentage points, meaning Democrats swung the district 31 points with Rehmet's victory. He became the first Democrat to win the seat since 1978.
The outcome is the latest warning sign ‒ and the most glaring to date ‒ of a potential blue wave during the 2026 midterms as Democrats look to take control of the House and Senate.
"A huge political earthquake," said Democratic pollster Matt McDermott , senior vice president of Whitman Insight Strategies, emphasizing the district's sizable make up of suburban white voters and Latinos ‒ demographics that could help decide competitive congressional races later this fall in Texas and other states.
"You already had evidence that you could be looking at a wave on par with 2018," McDermott said, referring to the last midterm election while Trump was in office when Democrats back won control of the U.S. House. "And I think there's a real concern Republicans should have about that actually getting worse over the next eight or so months, not better."
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Special elections are typically low-turnout contests with the party not in power, in this case Democrats, most enthused to show up at the polls. But McDermott pointed to data suggesting Rehmet won big with independent voters and even pulled over some Republicans.
"The suggestion that it's just Republicans staying home is, frankly, nonsense," he said.
Even some Republicans acknowledged the severity of the loss in Texas' Senate District 9. "Low turnout special elections are always unpredictable," Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Republican leader in the Texas Senate, said in a statement , but added: "The results from SD 9 are a wake-up call for Republicans across Texas. Our voters cannot take anything for granted."
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called the outcome "very concerning," telling reporters the Democratic swing "should concern every Republican" and "highlights the urgency of turnout in November."
In Rehmet, Democrats found the type of candidate they'd love to run elsewhere in 2026 ‒ a working-class mechanist, veteran of the U.S. Air Force and union president, who told voters that Texas leaders are ignoring the "real struggles of everyday people."
"This is a win for working people," Rehmet said in a post-election interview on MS NOW's "Morning Joe" on Feb. 2. "The folks that work every day in this Senate district, they're looking for something different."
More: Trump says Republicans should 'nationalize' elections, take control from states
'Affordability' message keeps resonating
In races across the country, Democrats have campaigned on a theme of expanding "affordability" as Americans continue to raise concerns about the cost of living during the Trump presidency ‒ even though inflation has dropped substantially from it's post-pandemic high under former President Joe Biden .
Rehmet turned to a similar playbook, calling lowering health care costs his top priority. "People are very concerned," Rehmet said. "They're struggling out here, choosing between rent and medicine. That shouldn't happen in such a great economy like we have."
Trump's approval rating remains hovering in the low 40s and even high 30s , according to recent polls , becoming a liability nationally for Republicans. Meanwhile, Democrats have expanded their lead in the generic congressional ballot to 52%-48%, a Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll taken Jan. 28 and 29 found.
More: American's confidence in Trump continues to slide, survey finds
After the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by federal immigration agents (ICE), communities across the U.S. are protesting
against Trump's surge of immigration enforcement actions.
Pictured here, Demonstrators gather for a protest calling for the removal of United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Jan. 30, 2026 in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Protests were held across the United States in response to ICE enforcement activity.
The state Senate election in Texas also came as Trump faces a backlash from the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota by federal authorities dispatched to the state to carry out the president's crackdown on illegal immigration.
Although Democrats have long been reluctant to make immigration ‒ considered a strong suit for Republicans politically ‒ a focus of campaigns, the scenes of clashes with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minnesota and elsewhere could change that .
A Jan. 13 poll by Quinnipiac University found 57% of voters nationally disapprove of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, versus 40% who approve.
More: White House slides into damage control over Minneapolis ICE operation
How worried should Republicans be?
In six special elections to fill U.S. House vacancies in 2025, Democrats overperformed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris ' 2024 election performance by 13 points ( Tennessee's District 7 ), 17 points ( Arizona's District 7 ), 23 points ( Florida's District 1 ), 16 points ( Florida's District 6 ), 28 points ( Texas's District 18 ), and 17 points ( Virginia's District 11 ).
Democratic Govs. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey notched double-digit wins in their November 2025 off-year elections.
In down-ballot state races, the shifts have been even wider, with Democrats flipping eight state legislative seats across five states and Republicans flipping none. The average overall shift has been 19.4 percentage points toward Democrats.
Republican strategist Brad Todd downplayed the significance of the Texas outcome, noting the election took place on an unusual day for voting ‒ a Saturday ‒ and was to fill the remaining months of a state Senate term while the Texas legislature is not in session. The two Republican candidates combined for 52% of the vote during the election's first round on Nov. 4, Todd pointed out. A runoff was triggered because no candidate reached a majority.
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Todd also argued Democrats keep overperforming in special elections because the contests are dominated by one of their key voting blocs ‒ college-educated voters with degrees.
"The fact is, under today's alignment, Democrats have a disproportionate share of people who have college degrees," Todd said. "And people who have college degrees think the world needs to know their opinion. And that's why they turn out to vote in every single election, special or otherwise. The more 'degreed' coalition will always have an advantage in specials."
Yet even if turnout in the Texas Senate District 9 matched a higher-turnout midterm election, prediction modeling suggests the result would have been a nine-point swing for Democrats, according to G. Elliott Morris, an election data analyst .
"The point is this: A big wave is gathering for 2026. There is at present no question of the existence of this wave, just its height," Morris wrote on his Substack "Strength in Numbers."
Trump has already started to set low expectations for Republicans' chances in November by pointing to the historic headwinds of the president's party suffering setbacks in the midterms. "It's an amazing phenomenon," Trump said to House Republicans during a Jan. 6 retreat. "They say that when you win the presidency, you lose the midterm."
"I wish you could explain to me what the hell's going on with the mind of the public, because we have the right policy. They don't," the president added.
Todd, co-founder of the Republican consulting firm OnMessage Public Strategies, said Republicans should be worried about the midterms, but not because of the trends from the special elections.
"The party in power typically struggles in a midterm election. The headwinds ‒ that's the No. 1 reason to be concerned," Todd said. "And the Democratic base is very energized right now."
Reach Joey Garrison on X @joeygarrison.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Blue wave? Democrat's romp in Texas race a 'wake-up call' for GOP.
