GOP STUNNED: Trump-Backed Candidate Loses Seat He Won by 17 Points
[media=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAzTP_HhD2A]
GOP STUNNED: Trump-Backed Candidate Loses Seat He Won by 17 Points
Republicans just lost a Texas state senate seat that Donald Trump won by 17 points, and the president campaigned for the losing candidate himself. Here's what the actual vote totals show, and why this race is part of a much bigger national pattern.
On January 31, 2026, Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a special election runoff for Texas State Senate District 9, a suburban Fort Worth district in Tarrant County that Trump carried by 17.4 points in the 2024 presidential election. That's a swing of roughly 31.8 points, one of the largest of any contested race this cycle. We break down how this fits into a national trend tracked by MultiState Elections, which shows an average 10.4-point Democratic swing across every contested special election held so far in 2026, comparable to the early signal in 2018, a year that ultimately delivered Democrats a net gain of over 300 state legislative seats. We also cover recent flips in New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, and explain the single number that's raising the most alarm inside the GOP: zero seats flipped from blue to red so far this year.
In this video:
The Texas Senate District 9 special election results and the 31.8-point swing
Why Trump personally campaigned for Leigh Wambsganss, and what happened after she lost
The national special election tracking data and the 2018 comparison
Recent flips in New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania
What a 10.4-point national swing could mean for control of Congress in November
GOP STUNNED: Trump-Backed Candidate Loses Seat He Won by 17 Points
Republicans just lost a Texas state senate seat that Donald Trump won by 17 points, and the president campaigned for the losing candidate himself. Here's what the actual vote totals show, and why this race is part of a much bigger national pattern.
On January 31, 2026, Democrat Taylor Rehmet defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss in a special election runoff for Texas State Senate District 9, a suburban Fort Worth district in Tarrant County that Trump carried by 17.4 points in the 2024 presidential election. That's a swing of roughly 31.8 points, one of the largest of any contested race this cycle. We break down how this fits into a national trend tracked by MultiState Elections, which shows an average 10.4-point Democratic swing across every contested special election held so far in 2026, comparable to the early signal in 2018, a year that ultimately delivered Democrats a net gain of over 300 state legislative seats. We also cover recent flips in New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, and explain the single number that's raising the most alarm inside the GOP: zero seats flipped from blue to red so far this year.
In this video:
The Texas Senate District 9 special election results and the 31.8-point swing
Why Trump personally campaigned for Leigh Wambsganss, and what happened after she lost
The national special election tracking data and the 2018 comparison
Recent flips in New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania
What a 10.4-point national swing could mean for control of Congress in November
