A Democrat just flipped a very Republican state Senate seat in Texas. Does that mean a 'blue wave' is coming in the 2026 midterms?

It’s not every day that national Democrats and Republicans flip out over the results of a special election runoff for a state Senate seat in Texas (or anywhere else).

But that’s exactly what’s happening after Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss by more than 14 percentage points Saturday night in the Lone Star State’s Ninth Senate District (SD-9), which covers the northern part of Tarrant County in and around Ft. Worth.

“The results from the special election in Texas are even worse for Republicans than they look,” Dan Pfeiffer, a former Barack Obama adviser, wrote on social media. “Every Republican on the ballot should be scared s***less.”

“A swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed,” agreed Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. “Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterms.”

On Tuesday, Nov. 3, President Trump will face midterm elections nationwide. Right now, the Republican Party narrowly controls both the U.S. House (by a margin of 218 to 214 ) and the U.S. Senate (by a margin of 53 seats to 47 seats). The incumbent president’s party almost always loses seats when voters return to the polls to judge his first two years in office. Sometimes, the backlash is so pervasive that the party loses almost every close contest — a phenomenon known as a “wave” election.

So could Nov. 3 bring a “blue wave”? That’s the argument Democrats are starting to make after Rehmet’s upset win in Texas — and it’s the outcome that Republicans are starting to fear. But there’s still a long way to go before Election Day. Here’s what we know so far, and what we don’t.

14 points is a lot — particularly in a district like SD-9

Northern Tarrant County isn’t just any old place. For one thing, it’s in Texas — a historically Republican state where Democrats are perpetually promising, and failing, to really compete. For another, it’s considered an emerging bellwether, i.e., the kind of area where Democrats have to do better if they ever want to win statewide (and improve their national fortunes as well).

Home to major defense contractors — and a hotbed of tea party activism during the Obama years — the district hasn’t sent a Democrat to the state Senate since the early 1980s. And Trump won it just two years ago by more than 17 points.

That means on Saturday, the district swung nearly 32 points to the left when it chose Rehmet, a machinist union leader and Air Force veteran, over Wambsganss, a well-connected local political activist.

Special elections come with caveats — but fewer here than elsewhere

Trying to divine the outcome of a national midterm election from the results in one state Senate district is a fool’s errand — especially nine months out. Skeptics will note that much can change between now and then; that the sample size is small; and that the electorate isn’t representative.

The skeptics have a point. Turnout was low on Saturday – under 100,000 votes. In recent years, Republicans have developed a habit of showing up when Trump is on the ballot and staying home when he’s not. As a result, Democrats have tended to overperform in precisely this sort of race.

But there were some mitigating circumstances in SD-9 that could make it less of an outlier than other special elections.

Wambsganss raised more than five times as much money as Rehmet, according to the latest filings.

The Republican National Committee, top statewide Republicans and even Trump all tried to help Wambsganss win. (“To all Voters in Texas’s 9th State Senate District: GET OUT AND VOTE for a phenomenal Candidate, Leigh Wambsganss,” Trump wrote on social media Saturday, in one of three separate posts on the subject. “You can win this Election for Leigh, who has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”)

Yet the district still swung away from the GOP by nearly 32 points.

Then there are Saturday’s actual voting patterns to consider. According to Ross Hunt, a Republican pollster and consultant in Texas, “Republicans did not lose the TX SD-9 runoff because of low GOP turnout: They lost because almost all of the independents and some of the Republicans voted Dem.”

In other words, Rehmet’s upset had more to do with how people voted than which people voted. The electorate was still 16 percentage points more Republican (51%) than Democratic (35%). But Wambsganss performed much worse than Trump because lots of “soft” Trump voters — moderate Republicans and Republican-leaning independents — broke hard against her. If the trend continues, it spells trouble for the GOP in November.

SD-9 isn’t an isolated incident

Trump’s GOP has been losing races like SD-9 for the last year.

According to leading political data journalist G. Elliot Morris, “Democrats have flipped eight Republican-held state legislative seats in special elections across five states” since Trump returned to the Oval Office — while “Republicans have flipped zero Democratic seats.”

Saturday’s victory in SD-9 was the biggest flip so far. But on average, these seats have been swinging to Democrats by 19 points — a sizable margin.

The president’s own numbers aren’t helping his party. Before Trump took office, more independents said they expected Trump to change America for the better (41%) than said they expected him to change America for the worse (34%), a Yahoo/YouGov poll found.

But today, a full 57% of independents say Trump has changed America for the worse while just 22% say he’s changed America for the better — a 42-point swing away from the president.

Meanwhile, Trump’s overall job-approval rating is as poor as it’s ever been, and immigration is becoming more of a weakness than a strength amid his ongoing mass-deportation crackdown in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

All of which suggests that “a big wave is gathering for 2026,” according to Morris. “There is at present no question of the existence of this wave,” he adds, “just its height.”

Things could change between now and November, of course. But when Morris overlaid the SD-9 results on the national map — and the national electorate — they corresponded to a 7-point Democratic victory in the U.S. House (which would be more than enough to flip the chamber).

The latest Fox News poll, conducted from Jan. 23 to 26, showed something similar: that if the midterms were held today, 52% of voters would back the Democratic candidate in their House district while 46% would back the Republican. That 52% is the highest level of support Fox has ever recorded for either party.