Democrats Flip Yet Another Red Trump District

By Jacob Weindling | August 27, 2025 | 9:53am

Photo by Dirk DBQ

Elections Special Elections

Democrats Flip Yet Another Red Trump District

One of the themes of 2025 has been Republicans getting waxed in electoral home games. The week after Trump was sworn in as president, Democrat Mike Zimmer won Iowa’s State Senate District 35 by four points, a 25-point swing from a few months prior where Trump won the district by 21 points. In March, Democratic Mayor of East Petersburg, James Andrew Malone, beat Republican Josh Parsons in a Pennsylvania district that has voted Democrat in just one presidential election since 1856. A couple months later, Democrat Sam Sutton won New York State Senate District 22, a mind-blowing 90 percent swing from the 55-point margin Trump won by in November. This has been such a consistent problem for the GOP that Trump pulled Elise Stefanik’s UN nomination over fears they would lose the election to replace her in a district she just won by 24 points, and these surprising losses are no doubt animating Trump’s diktats to Texas Republicans to steal more seats in Congress.

And now we can add another one to the pile, as last night, Democrat Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch in Iowa’s 1st State Senate District by a little over 10 points, a net 21-point swing from Trump’s 11-point victory in this district in November. This is a significant result not just because of the large shift from red to blue, but also because this rids Iowa of its GOP supermajority, and now Republican governor Kim Reynolds will have to find some Democratic support to confirm her judges and cabinet members. Republican Iowa Senator Joni “We Are All Going to Die” Ernst no doubt is waking up today more nervous about next year’s reelection bid than she was yesterday.

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The Downballot has been tracking all the special election results this year, and Democrats are running 15.8 percent ahead of their 2024 presidential results, and 11.5 percent ahead of 2020. The caveat that Democrats now over-perform in special elections applies to every special election in the Trump era, as Republicans have proven time and time again that far less of them are willing to vote if dear leader’s name is not on the ballot. There’s little reason to assume that Trump won’t follow through on his threat to illegally run again in 2028, as the Republican Party is determined to end democracy in America for good, all at the behest of a game show host who spent copious amounts of time partying with Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats cannot expect to use these surprising special election results as an exact model so long as the GOP’s cult leader is on the ballot.

But it’s still a stark reminder of Trump’s unpopularity and how thin actual support for Republicans is past their cult of personality. The press and elite American society have been more than happy to bend over backwards to placate America’s autocrat this year, all while his polls plummet and his minions lose winnable elections in districts Trump carried with ease. We are not resigned to the autocratic fate that the American elite are clearly very happy to help us slide into, and there are countless elections this year proving that we can fight back against this fundamentally anti-American movement and win.