(TNND) — A North Texas state Senate seat that flipped from Republican to Democrat this weekend in a special election may very well flip right back to the GOP in a likely rematch this fall for a full four-year term.
But Democrat Taylor Rehmet’s victory over Republican Leigh Wambsganss is still a warning sign that Republicans should heed, according to Texas political experts.
Rehmet didn’t just flip the seat, at least for the rest of this year, but he beat his Republican opponent by 15 percentage points in a solidly red district that President Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.
“It’s another piece of evidence in the trend that we’ve seen in these special elections and these off-year elections, where Republicans are underperforming where they were in 2024, and Democrats are overperforming,” said Mark Jones, a political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute.
Last year, Democrats flipped 13 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates while Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the state’s gubernatorial race.
Democrat Mikie Sherrill won the New Jersey gubernatorial race.
A Republican fended off a Democratic challenger to a U.S. House seat in a red district in Tennessee, but the margin of victory shrank to single digits.
And now a Democrat was elected to a Texas state senate seat that’s been in GOP control for years.
“People expect this to be a good Democratic year,” said James Henson, executive director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “This would suggest that that probably is going to be the case in Texas, as well.”
Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images, file
Jones and Henson both offered words of caution about reading too much into the results of a special election at the end of January.
Henson said voter turnout in the regular November election will be two or three times as large.
Jones said the November voters are likely to lean more Republican.
And both men said Rehmet faces an uphill battle to keep the seat past the November election.
But Henson called Tarrant County in North Texas, where this district is located, a “weather vane” for how Republicans might perform this fall.
“At the very least, this is going to be … another wakeup call for Republicans, reminding them that 2026 is going to be a tough year and that anybody that is thinking that 2026 is going to look like 2024 in Texas is likely to be punished for that view at the ballot box,” Henson said.
Jones said it’s also a warning sign for the national GOP.
This district includes part of Fort Worth and got “a little less dark red, a little pinker” after 2021 redistricting, Jones said.
Democrats were more motivated to turn out than Republicans. And both men said some moderate Republicans were willing to break with a party they believe has gone too far right.
“In pink and purple districts, President Trump is much more of a liability than an asset as we look ahead towards November 2026,” Jones said.
Trump’s approval rating sits at a second-term low of 36%, according to Gallup tracking.
All of this signals Democrats might be in line to recapture the tightly contested U.S. House from Republicans this year.
History is already on the Democrats’ side, with the sitting president’s party losing seats in the House in eight of 10 midterm elections going back 40 years.
This is just one special election.
“But I do think that Republicans would be foolish to look at this result and not see it as a possible leading edge of what’s coming in the general election and adjust their strategy accordingly,” he said.
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