“Things are very bad for the Republicans under Trump”: Florida is just the beginning, the GOP tsunami is becoming more likely
Florida – On Tuesday night, Democrats won two highly watched special elections, which sent more warning signs to Republicans in places that have regularly voted red in recent cycles. Strategists and party leaders on both sides quickly took notice of the results. They argued they show that voters are changing in deeper ways as the country gets closer to the 2026 midterm elections.
The races showed that Republicans are becoming increasingly concerned that their usual advantages may not be holding, especially in places where the party has always felt safe. Analysts say that these elections were not just local races, but signs that larger political groups could be at play, especially in places that have been affected by recent redistricting efforts.
The most surprising result was in South Florida, as Democrat Eileen Higgins won the Miami mayoral race. This was the first time in almost 30 years that a Democrat had occupied the office. Higgins beat Republican businessman Emilio González by almost 20 points, even though President Donald Trump backed González. The margin of victory surprised a lot of people and rapidly became a major topic of discussion after the election.
After this mayoral race, conservative commentators showed their unease. Television producer Tom Brennan touched on the bigger picture, saying that a Republican win in a major Democratic city with a Democratic government would have been seen as a huge deal. Instead, he said that the opposite result in South Florida shows that Republicans are in big trouble because of Trump’s influence.
“If a Republican had been elected Mayor of NYC under a Biden administration it would have been (rightly) viewed as an earthquake,” he wrote on X. “Things are VERY bad for the Republicans under Trump.”
That same night, Georgia dealt the GOP another blow. Eric Gisler, a Democrat, won the 121st House District, which Trump had won by more than ten points in the last election. The result was especially interesting because it happened after a major redistricting that was meant to give Republicans more power in the state legislature. The new map didn’t safeguard the seat, therefore it didn’t lock in gains.
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Election experts quickly pointed out the irony. According to Vote Hub analyst Zachary Donnini, the Republican plan to redraw Georgia’s congressional districts seems to have backfired. Lawmakers wanted to weaken the Democrats by dividing that particular area into three districts that lean conservative. Even though Gisler worked hard, he won in a district that Trump had won by 12 points, turning a perfectly planned red seat blue.
The Georgia result made Republicans even more angry with each other. Blake McClellan, chairman of the Forsyth County Republican Party, publicly urged party members to stop infighting and take the Democratic gains seriously, warning that momentum was shifting faster than many had anticipated.
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These problems also brought up criticism of the GOP’s larger effort to redraw district lines in the middle of the decade. After the Democrats won in November, columnist Mary Ellen Klas said that Republicans went too far when they followed Trump’s advice to redraw maps in red states. The plan was to add more Republican-leaning seats to the House majority, but it made districts that were already safe less safe in the process. Klas says that the recent election results reveal that the risk didn’t pay off, and Republicans are now vulnerable in locations where they thought they would win easily.
