Texas Special Election Swing Raises GOP Midterm Alarm (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: This morning, there are Republicans across the country who are nervous. Florida Governor Ron Santis put this on Twitter. He said, Special elections are quirky and not necessarily projectable, re-a general election. That said, a swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed. Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the midterm. What is he talking about? What has him and other Republicans so worried seeing a chief data analyst, Harry Enten, is here? And this is all about a special election for a Texas state Senate seat around Fort Worth.

[00:00:40] Speaker 2: That's exactly right. Texas 9, Texas 9, because what happened in Texas 9? It didn't just swing to the left. It took a rocket ship to the left. My goodness gracious, the Texas 9 Senate district election marches. This was a district that Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024. The Democratic candidate in the special election on Saturday, hello, won it by 14 points. That's an over 30 point shift to the left. Any Republican, unlike Ron DeSantis, who doesn't take this seriously, they should realize that this is very perilous. They ignore this result at their own peril. Ron DeSantis is right to say, hey, special elections can be quirky, but this ain't no quirk.

[00:01:23] Speaker 1: Senator Mike Sessions from Texas basically told me, he said, no Democrat should ever win in North Texas like this. Although we also said, yeah, there was an ice storm, 31 points. That's not an ice storm. No, that ain't no ice storm. If you ignore this, you're going to ice yourself out of a majority come the midterm. All right, when we look at these special elections, and this is something you and I talk about a lot and look at very closely in between the federal elections, what can they tell us?

[00:01:48] Speaker 2: OK, so, you know, you see this 31 point shift to the left, right? If this were just one election, that would be one thing. But it's the slew of special elections that together paint a picture, and it's a picture that Democrats should love and a picture that Republicans should be really worried about. Because what are we talking about here? OK, the average 2025, 26 special election, Democrats are doing, get this, 12 points better, 12 points better than Kamala Harris did in 2024. You know, that was a state special election that happened in Texas on Saturday. If you look at the federal special elections, this 12 points is actually north of 15 points on average. I was looking back through the history books. This looks a whole heck of a lot like what we saw during the 2017-2018 cycle, where you saw these Democrats outperforming how Hillary Clinton did in 2016. And what did it forecast? It forecast a net gain of 40 seats for Democrats. And I remember back in Pennsylvania, remember there was that South Michigan, that was a congressional special election seat. But that was one in which the Democratic candidate was able to actually win in a deeply red Republican district. And that, of course, foretold big Democratic gains come 2018.

[00:02:57] Speaker 1: Foretells how? I mean, how frequently do these special elections foretell what happens in the midterms? OK, so you see this 12 point overperformance.

[00:03:06] Speaker 2: You see this 31 point overperformance. But that don't mean nothing if it ain't forecastable to the midterm elections. So what are we looking at here? Well, take a look at special elections since all the way back in the 2005-2006 cycle. Five out of five times, the party that outperforms in the special elections goes on to win the U.S. House of Representatives. And this, of course, all paints a picture, right? Texas 9, the special elections, the history of special elections in which Democrats look like they're in the catbird seat to take back the U.S. House come 2026 November.

[00:03:44] Speaker 3: Which is why Ron DeSantis and others are nervous this morning. They should be. Thank you very much. Kate?

[00:03:49] Speaker 4: Harry, will you put your first slide back up as I bring in the Democratic congressman Adam Smith of Washington to talk more about this? Thank you so much, gentlemen. Congressman, thank you so much for being here. That what Harry and John were just talking about, this 31 point shift in a special election in a state Senate seat in Texas. You see that and you think what?

[00:04:15] Speaker 5: I think Republicans are in trouble and we've got a real opportunity in the elections coming up this year. It becomes very clear Donald Trump's policies are doing great damage to this country. And the Republican Party is going along with every single one of them, whether you're talking about health care cuts, the tariffs, ICE terrorizing the people of Minneapolis and across the country, the president, gosh, doing things like shutting down the Kennedy Center and tearing down the White House, acting more like a monarch than a democratically elected president. All of that has made Trump incredibly unpopular. Number one. Number two, people have rallied all across this country. Millions of people have showed up to protest these policies. And also, don't look now, but the Democratic Party actually is messaging fairly effectively. Our leadership during the government shutdown, I think, focused on health care, focused on what Trump was doing in a very effective way. Now, the elections are a long way away. We got a lot of work to do. But certainly right now, the Republican Party is in deep trouble.

[00:05:17] Speaker 4: And for some context here, you have been one who has been vocal Democrats speaking out to say the Democrats need to get their message straight ever since the 20 the 24 election. You came on shortly after that to lay out your prescription for we basically Democrats need to get their act together. So context around your commentary here.

[00:05:37] Speaker 6: One more thing. Democrats scored a pair of surprising special election wins in Texas. In Houston, Christian Menefee won a House race, narrowing the slim Republican majority.

[00:05:50] Speaker 7: President Trump, my message to you is this. You've gone nearly a year without hearing from the people of the 18th Congressional District of Texas. The results here tonight are a mandate for me to work as hard as I can to oppose your agenda to fight back against.

[00:06:17] Speaker 6: And the hits keep coming for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterm election in the Texas State Senate. Union leader and Air Force veteran Taylor Remit, Taylor Remit, flipped a deep red seat. That's when is notable and being considered a wake up call, frankly, for Republicans. That's because Trump actually won that district by 17 points in 2024 remit won by 14 points. So roughly a 31 point difference. The group chat is back. I hate to give people math early in the morning, but the math matters because right now, if someone has a cold in the house, Mike Johnson is worried. Will they be there for the vote? What's going on? Like, it's narrow enough that these things matter.

[00:06:57] Speaker 8: Yeah, with that, with that house win for the Democrats, that's a one seat majority now that the Republicans have. But like this is special elections are always over read, I think, for what they mean. In this case, a 31 point swing in a district that is often seen as sort of a bellwether with what it reflects around other voting trends around the country. And I think you can maybe go to what Donald Trump himself said about this. He said when he was asked about yesterday, you mean I won by 17 and this person lost? Things like that happen. I'm not on the ballot. That might be, in fact, a problem for the Republicans.

[00:07:30] Speaker 6: I mean, the thing I'm confused about is you're sending Tulsi Gabbard down to Fulton County to look at votes from 2020 20. And meanwhile, the calls are coming from inside the House that there are some frustrated voters in places that should be a lock. Am I misreading that?

[00:07:46] Speaker 9: No. The president has been very clear that he's concerned about his elections, including the past one that he lost and doesn't admit that he lost. He's still litigating that what we're not. It's not clear yet if he's going to put that same level of attention into the midterm elections this year. We keep hearing from the White House that that's going to happen, that he's going to be touring the country, that he's going to be getting out for these candidates, especially in the case of this Texas state legislative seat. It was a very halfhearted late attempt to get involved. But you are seeing Republicans start to warn very publicly that this is a wake up call for them. The lieutenant governor of Texas, Ron DeSantis in Florida, saying, you know, there are it's a special election, there's asterisks to this, but it's a big swing and it's something that Republicans, you're going to expect, are going to be much more vocal about.