What do the Florida and Wisconsin elections tell us about the next 2 years?

Three elections on April 1, two in Florida to fill vacant Republican House seats and one in Wisconsin to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat, were the first real tests of how the public might be reacting to President Trump’s whirlwind first months in office. What do the results mean for the next two years?

Florida

In Florida, two MAGA districts—the 1st and the 6th—found Republican candidates winning, but coming in far behind Trump’s victories in those districts just two years before. Republicans were relieved to hold on to two Florida House seats—but the fact that they had reason to be relieved spoke to the level of anxiety in the GOP over the backlash to Trump’s policies. With its precariously narrow majority in the House, the party had already signaled its worries by asking Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) to abandon her nomination as Ambassador to the United Nations, lest the party face yet another special election for her seat. Stefanik won by 24 percentage points in 2024, so a Florida-size swing could have produced an uncomfortably close result in her district, especially because the Republican nominee would not have enjoyed the advantages of incumbency.

Despite the victories, the Florida results show that Republicans had good reason to avoid a fight for Stefanik’s seat. In the 1st congressional district, vacated by the resignation of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer, defeated Democrat Gay Valimont, a champion of stronger gun laws, by a margin of 14.6%. Last November, Gaetz defeated Valimont by 32 percentage points. The margin swung toward the Democrats: 17.4%.

A similar swing was recorded in Florida’s 6th congressional district, where Republican State Sen. Randy Fine defeated Democrat Josh Weil, a public school teacher, by 14 percentage points. Last November, former Rep. Michael Walz, who left his post to become Trump’s national security adviser, won the seat by 33 percentage points. The swing toward the Democrats: 19%.

In each district, the drop-off by county from Trump’s vote in 2024 to the Republican vote in 2025 was substantial. Some of this is, of course, was to be expected. Presidential races bring out more marginal voters than do off-year elections—especially special elections. Nonetheless, the size of the drop-off and its consistency across counties should be cause for some Republicans to worry.

Two special elections do not make a trend. But it’s worth noting that swings at this level would be catastrophic for Republicans if they happened in the 2026 elections. In 2024, 15 House Republicans won with margins of less than 5%; an additional 28 GOP House members won by margins of between 5% and 15%. A 43-seat shift would be a rout.

How likely are Florida’s races to be predictive of next year’s outcome? The 2017 special House elections during Trump’s first term offer a clue. The GOP managed to win all five special elections in seats they had won the year before. But in all of them, as in Florida’s contests, the party lost substantial ground. The margin decline ranged from a low of 10.1% in Montana’s at-large seat to 24.9% in Kansas’ fourth district, for an average decline of 17.3%—right in line with Florida’s results. The vote losses Republicans suffered in these special races turned out to be indicative of trouble to come for the GOP in 2018 when Democrats gained 41 House seats on a margin swing in the total vote in House races of 9.7% their way.

These two races also show that Republicans are now much more dependent on loosely connected voters than Democrats, and are, therefore, more vulnerable in off-year elections. To illustrate:

• In Florida 1, the Republican nominee’s vote total was only 35.4% of Trump’s, while the Democrat’s total was 51.1% of Harris’s.
• In Florida 6, the Republican got 38.7% of Trumps; the Democrat, 58.0% of Harris’s.
• In Wisconsin, Crawford got an amazing 77.8% of Harris’s total, while Schimel got a respectable, but much smaller, 62.4% of Trump’s.

Election Day 2026 is, of course, 18 months away. But what happened on April 1 will not be overlooked by House members and Senators on the ballot next year—or by Democrats thinking of contesting them. Members of the GOP in potentially tough districts or states who were mostly worried about primary challenges at the cost of breaking with Trump will now also look over their left shoulders, to the possibility of losing general elections in an anti-Trump backlash.

As important will be the impact these races have on Democrats’ decisions over whether or not to contest some Republican seats in the first place. It comes as no surprise that the decision to run is impacted by the likelihood of winning. A popular state senator or county commissioner may not want to give up their job for a chance to serve in Congress, especially if the chances of victory are small. Hence many races in “safe” districts of either party run without a serious challenger from the other party. But, if 2026 looks like a good year for Democrats, expect more serious candidates to jump into the race.

Wisconsin

In Wisconsin the race that attracted even more attention than the Florida races was the race for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The contest, in a state that Trump won by less than 1% of the vote, presented a clear choice between a MAGA conservative, Brad Schimel, and a mainstream liberal, Susan Crawford. (Judicial races in Wisconsin are nonpartisan, so there are no party labels on the ballot.) Because it was so easy to turn Schimel into a proxy for Trump, and Crawford into a proxy for some Democrat yet to be determined, it garnered national attention and money—becoming the most expensive judicial race in history.

But the outsized roll that Elon Musk played in the campaign turned it into a race against Musk as much as it was a race against the president. Not only did Musk campaign in the state wearing a cheesehead, but he poured millions into the state and awarded two voters $1 million checks for collecting signatures.

The results were a clear rebuke to Musk and to Trump. Crawford won the state by exactly 10 percentage points. Schimel ran behind Trump’s vote in every county in the state. And turnout increased by 12% over the turnout in the 2023 Wisconsin race. As the following charts show, Crawford did substantially better than Kamala Harris in 2024 in the two biggest counties in the state which also happen to be Democratic strongholds—Dane (where the University of Wisconsin sits) and Milwaukee. In what is known as the base of the Republican vote in the state, the three WOW counties: Washington, Ozaukee, and Waukesha, Schimel finished short of Trump’s vote in 2024. Crawford improved over Harris’ vote and Schimel fell short of Trump’s vote in the majority of counties.

One of the most immediate results of Tuesday’s election in Wisconsin will be to diminish Elon Musk’s standing in the Trump administration. As he and his DOGE team implemented changes throughout the federal government, the public became more and more suspicious of his role. In a recent poll, he had a 38% approval rating and his actions at DOGE were approved by only 41% of the public. Even before his debacle in Wisconsin, there was talk of him leaving his government post sometime this spring to pay more attention to his businesses.

What is generally not noted, however, is that whatever happens to Musk the Trump Administration is gradually filling up positions that are Senate confirmed. When Musk began his work agencies were home alone and powerless to resist edicts which seemed to be coming from the president himself. That is no longer the case. Cabinet secretaries have pushed back against DOGE plans beginning in March when Rubio took on Musk in front of the president. As more and more political appointees fill up the sub-cabinet positions there will be a counterweight to the DOGE team plans.

What does it all mean?

The April 1 vote is likely to have a hard-to-measure but still important impact on the political mood. “Vibe shift” is no doubt an overused and imprecise term, but the months after Trump’s victory last November clearly did lead to a vibe among many of his opponents that involved some combination of fatalism, and, in some cases, resignation. The Democratic Party was racked with dissension over what went wrong and how serious its problems were.

What happened in Wisconsin and Florida will not suddenly change all that. But, the translation of the grassroots mobilization, visible in town halls and demonstrations around the country, into electoral strength, altered the mood within the Democratic Party almost instantly. The overlap between Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) 25-hour protest speech and the elections, suggested a hardening of the party leadership’s position toward Trump—to the relief of grassroots Democrats who had been looking for precisely such a shift. And while Trump retains and has shown a willingness to use government power to push institutions toward compliance with his wishes, the sense that opposition to him is not futile is likely to stiffen spines and harden resistance.

It can, of course, be a mistake to overread special and off-cycle elections. Still, it’s striking that the mood change in April 1st’s elections affected both parties. The headline on the Politico website on Wednesday night brought this home: “Republicans are increasingly anxious about a midterms wipeout.” Also on Wednesday, Trump suffered a rare setback in the Senate as four Republicans joined all the Democrats on a 51-48 roll call vote to end the “emergency” powers Trump used to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada. The vote was probably not influenced by the elections. But it did say something about the post-April 1 climate.

And days after the special election results, the stock market tanked in reaction to Trump’s tariff announcements. That is bound to have political repercussions. It’s not January 20 anymore.