On Tuesday, Democrats got not one, but two special election pickups. The most attention-grabbing win was in Florida's 40th Senate District, where Democrat Annette Taddeo defeated Republican Jose Felix Diaz, who resigned from the state House to run for this Miami-area seat, 51-47. Taddeo's win means the GOP will have a 24-16 majority in the state Senate, their smallest edge since 2000. In New Hampshire, Democrat Kari Lerner defeated Republican James Headd 50-48 in HD- Rockingham-4, flipping a seat that had gone for Trump 59-36 and Romney 60-39. This is the third New Hampshire House seat that has flipped from red to blue this cycle.
The Florida win is particularly sweet for Democrats. While Clinton carried this seat 58-40 and Florida data expert Matthew Isbell writes that it backed Obama 54-45, it would be a mistake to just treat this as a dramatic under-performance for Team Blue. As we've noted before, this area, which is home to a large Cuban-American voting bloc, is considerably redder down-ballot. According to Isbell, Marco Rubio carried this seat 50-47 last year. In November, Republican Frank Artiles also defeated Democrat Dwight Bullard, a state senator who had lost many of his constituents to redistricting, 51-41. (A few months later, Artiles resigned after he unleashed a racist tirade against fellow state senators.)
To make things even more complicated, Hurricane Irene hit this area hard earlier this month. As we wrote in our most recent Voting Rights Roundup, several parts of the district are still working to recover. This includes Richmond Heights in SD-40, a heavily black neighborhood, which is still suffering from major power outages. Democrats and nonpartisan voting rights groups had called on Republican Gov. Rick Scott to delay the special election, but the governor refused. And despite all that, Taddeo won.
There's one other good sign for local Democrats here. Next year, Team Blue will be targeting GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo, who won re-election 53-41 last year even as his 26th Congressional District was swinging from 55-44 Obama to 57-41 Clinton. Democrats will also be targeting the neighboring 27th District, where longtime GOP Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is retiring; her seat went from 53-46 Obama to 59-39 Clinton. Almost half of Curbelo's constituents live in SD-40, while the Senate seat makes up about 20 percent of the 27th District. In order to take either House seat, Democrats need to win over many of the voters who backed Clinton in 2016 but voted GOP down-ballot, and Taddeo's win suggests they can.
Of course, the results don't mean that either seat is going blue. Taddeo wisely tied Diaz to Trump, and she had one talking point that other Democrats likely won't have: Diaz had actually been a contestant on The Apprentice. It's also worth noting that on Tuesday, Republican Daniel Perez defeated Democrat Gabriela Mayaudon 66-34 in HD-116, which was the seat Diaz had to give up to run for the Senate under Florida's resign to run law.
HD-116 had swung from 55-45 Romney to 51-46 Clinton, but Mayaudon had little money or outside support. We've been tracking every special election between a Republican and a Democrat since Nov. 8, and this is easily the worst underperformance for a Democrat compared to Clinton. Trump's unpopularity gives Democrats a big opening down-ballot in the Miami area, but it would be a mistake to assume that the GOP will immediately start losing its longtime voters in droves.
There was one final special election on Tuesday in South Carolina, but there was little suspense here. Democrat Rosalyn Henderson Myers defeated Republican Michael Fowler 91-9 in HD-31, though this is still a huge overperformance from Clinton's 72-24 victory here or Obama's 79-20 win.