Democrats won more special elections last night

In 2025, Democrats have been beating expectations pretty much everywhere — and it's not just because of turnout.

Dear members,

Yesterday, residents in six legislative districts across Oklahoma, Florida, and Massachusetts voted in special elections for state House and Senate members. Democrats beat expectations in five of the six.

The most surprising result came in Oklahoma. As reported by The Downballot:

The most dominant victory came in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Democrat Amanda Clinton, a public relations consultant and a member of the Cherokee Nation, cruised to a 69-point landslide over Republican Beverly Atteberry to defend the 71st House District. Since Kamala Harris carried this constituency by a 19-point margin, Clinton's win represented a 50-point overperformance—the second-largest this year.

This 50-point overperformance relative to Harris’s margin in 2024 is about four times the average swing across all state legislative special elections held in 2025. The median seat has moved 13 points toward the Democrats since November 2024.

OK HD-71 is an interesting seat because it (1) has a higher than average share of Black voters, (2) is nearly majority minority, and (3) has an above-average rate of people holding a Bachelor’s degree. Property values and per-capita income are also higher there compared to the average OK district. This mix of high-education voters, especially high-education whites, and diversity has made it ground zero for a swing to Democrats at the state legislative level as coalitions have polarized and nationalized from 2016 to 2024.

This got me thinking… Are the districts moving to Democrats in 2025 places that have already been trending toward them? That would be useful to know, since if so, that would make the swing to the left since 2024 somewhat less notable.

Turns out: no!