The numbers are in: Democrats are fired up
A deep dive into two recent special elections in Florida shows the #Resistance is back and stronger than ever
A quick editor’s note:
Today’s post is written by Jesse Richardson. Jesse is a political data analyst, election forecaster, and fellow Substack writer with whom I have worked several times in the past few years. This analysis is a Jesse classic: a deep dive into hard data to answer important questions about recent trends, in a way nobody else is. This post looks at official turnout data to measure enthusiasm levels among voters in two April special elections in Florida. It’s the latest in a trio of posts about Democrats doing very well in specials — better even than in 2018.
I’m happy to be publishing this article by Jesse for two reasons: first, it’s a very smart analysis and executed well (I wish I had thought of it!); and second, because this is a big step in growing Strength In Numbers into a fully fledged outlet for data-driven political analysis. I’m hoping to platform more smart, independent data analysts as the business grows and matures. More on that after the article.
Here’s Jesse’s post:
The two special elections held in Florida on April 1 were supposed to be sleepy affairs. Florida’s first and sixth congressional districts voted for Donald Trump by 37 and 30 percentage points, respectively. With no strong Democratic recruits in either seat, both were expected to be uninteresting GOP landslides.
However, an unprecedented level of Democratic enthusiasm in early voting (combined with a couple of close polls in FL-06) prompted a temporary GOP freak-out, resulting in Elise Stefanik’s nomination for UN Ambassador getting nixed. The Florida numbers suggested that her Trump +21 seat would be extremely vulnerable in a special election, and Republicans simply don’t have the seats to spare.
In the end, Republican candidates did ultimately win both districts. But the average margin in the two seats was just 14 points — less than half of Trump’s margin just six months ago.
The sheer level of their underperformance versus Trump is a warning sign for the Republicans about upcoming races. Ultimately, seats like FL-01 and FL-06 will not be competitive next November — but less GOP-leaning seats could be. What we really care about for the midterms is what these specials imply about other parts of the country.
White Democrats are turning out like crazy
With that in mind, let’s look at how different groups turned out relative to 2024, for each of these two special elections. In the next tables, I’ve used Florida’s voter file — a person-by-person record of who voted in a given election — to calculate the percent of voters in each demographic group that turned up in 2025, relative to their 2024 turnout.
This table shows, for example, that Floridians registered as Democrats cast 55% of the ballots they did in 2024, whereas Republicans turned out at just 39%.
This is a lot of numbers, so let’s focus on the most important part: white Democrats are turning out like crazy.
In both elections, white Democrats massively outvoted every other group, including non-white Democrats. This is not unexpected; we saw in 2022 that white Democrats were fired up to vote while non-white turnout lagged.
From this, we can reasonably predict that Democrats can expect to have a pretty insane turnout advantage in white districts next November. That could end up decisive in several purple House seats.
Take Jared Golden, a moderate Democrat who is running for re-election in a congressional district Trump won by 9 points in 2024. Golden has a history of winning over Trump voters, but it may be that this time he doesn’t even need to. If the turnout patterns from Florida and other specials hold, it wouldn’t be surprising if 2024 Harris voters outnumber 2024 Trump voters in that district’s electorate next November.
Another potentially strong sign for the Democrats is how they’re activating non-white voters. Non-white turnout was significantly stronger in FL-01 than FL-06 (I have no idea why this is and would love to hear some theories). This will provide some empirical ammo for those people arguing that Democratic issues with non-white turnout are not a foregone conclusion, and can be ameliorated by differences in candidates, districts, and campaigns.
Drilling down, Black turnout in FL-01 didn’t eclipse white Democratic turnout (because apparently nothing does these days), but it was still significantly higher than white Republican turnout. Hispanic turnout was pretty abysmal in both cases. That isn’t a huge issue for Democrats in most of the country, but it does portend trouble for the party in places with lots of moderate Hispanic Democrats — such as Rep. Adam Gray in California’s Central Valley. He may be the most vulnerable Democrat in 2026.
By way of caveats, I should also stress that party registration does not map perfectly to vote choice, and this is especially true in these low-turnout affairs. We know this is true because the people who turn out for special elections tend to be a lot more Democratic-leaning than implied by their party registration. In the FL-01 special election, for example, the electorate was R+34 in two-way party registration but the final vote was just R+14. In other words, there were a large number of voters in this special election who are registered as Republicans or “no party affiliation” who voted Democratic.
In other words, the above tables are definitely understating the Democratic turnout advantage, which is pretty nuts given the already sky-high numbers. They’re also probably understating it specifically with white voters, since Black voters in these specials are already D+90 by party reg, so there’s not really any room for Democrats to grow there.
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Young Democrats are more engaged than young Republicans
The final thing that pops out to me is the turnout profile when you look at party by age. You may have heard that young voters are a lot more Republican than they used to be, and that’s true. But the most engaged young voters are still extremely Democratic — there’s just a large pool of Republican-leaning youth who only turn out for Presidential elections. This is another effect that is concentrated among white voters, as you can see in this graph:
The light blue line shows the Democratic margin (two-way) in party registration by age, among white people, for people who voted in FL-06 in November 2024. The dark blue line is the same, but for those who voted in the April 2025 special election. As you can see, relative to 2024 Democrats had a turnout edge among white people of all ages, but the effect gets insane as you get younger (particularly among millennials). White people aged 31-33 are an R+51 group in this district, but if you look at special election voters, they actually lean Democratic.
Yes, that’s a turnout advantage of over 50 points for Democrats with this (admittedly small) group. Those are insane numbers. Lots of Republicans are sitting on the sidelines.
Democrats favored for a House takeover in 2026
Putting this all together, Democrats are well-placed to have strong turnout next November, especially so in white areas and potentially also areas that skew young (e.g., college towns). Competitive districts that may fit this profile include Wisconsin’s 3rd, Iowa’s 1st, and Michigan’s 7th. If you simply took the electorate turning out in special elections and mixed it 50-50 with the 2024 electorate, Democrats would be strong favorites to take the House. (The Senate is less favorable to Democrats).
Even with Trump as president, control over the lower chamber of Congress would be huge for the left. On Tuesday, July 1, Republicans in the Senate passed their unpopular, deficit-exploding, Medicaid-slashing “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” by one vote. GOP Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted no, with Vice President JD Vance providing the tie-breaker.
I’m going to keep watching special elections, as well as polls, to see how this picture develops. But right now, and as we’ve seen with lots of other data, when it comes to low-turnout elections, the ball is in the Democratic Party’s court.
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I wish the Americans here a nice Independence Day.
Elliott
 | A guest post by
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This is the article I needed this morning as I watch the coverage in the House of the vote on the MAGA Murder Bill. Rep Jeffries is quite eloquent speaking to the harm the Americans will be subjected to by the MAGA bullies, including the Republicans, in service of the Billionaires. We have much work to do and we are seeing some of the positive results. Happy 4th of July to all those who are pro democracy advocates.
Good note about registration not necessarily reflecting affiliation. Northern Virginia leans heavily Democratic but anyone can walk up and vote in either primary election (which in the past sometimes inspires one party or the other to replace a primary with a caucus or closed selection process). And then I suspect that many who like me consider ourselves independents show up and vote as Democrats because the alternative is unacceptable.